


Compact

by talesofstories



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 04, also buffy standing up for herself, and that's all there is, and then basically ignoring the canon timeline, fluffy and feelings, post-Something Blue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofstories/pseuds/talesofstories
Summary: When Buffy decides the reason all her relationships have either blown up or never gotten off the ground is because every guy she's ever tried to date has been too stupid tall, she realizes there's only one person who will fit her dating qualifications: Spike. Now she's just gotta convince him of that too.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 40
Kudos: 247





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a silly little fic based on the idea that Buffy can’t date Riley because he’s too tall, and it spiraled into Feelings and Introspection and Sweet Moments. Which is delightful, but it means this is much more of a behemoth than originally planned. Also, please enjoy this quote from season 5 Xander which I remembered probably halfway through writing this and which acts as like the spiritual description for this fic: "Spike is strong and mysterious and sorta compact but well-muscled." Yes! Yes he is.

“Do you know what I love about Oz?”

Buffy smiled at her best friend and the glazed, dreamy expression on her face. She loved how gushy Willow was about him and how gushy Oz was about her in return. In his own, quiet, doesn’t actually gush sort of way. She was so glad they worked out the issues caused by Willow’s lip-lockage with Xander so that they could go back to being the dream couple. Someone in their group had to have a good love life. “What do you love about him?”

Willow sighed as they walked to where the boys were waiting for them across the way on Sunnydale High’s lawn. “I love how compact he is. You know? All his bits are right where I can reach them.”

Buffy’s eyebrows shot up. “‘All his bits,’ hunh?”

The scarlet Willow’s face turned clashed with her hair, and Buffy couldn’t hold back a giggle. “Well, yes, those bits. But also! Kissing! I don’t have to break my neck just trying to get up to his lips! Or, or hugging! I don’t feel like he’s going to smother me in his chest!”

Buffy glanced slyly over at her friend. “And what about when _those bits_ are involved?”

Willow looked warily at where the boys stood waiting for them, making sure they were out of earshot still. “Everything is still within reach. And I never feel like he’s gonna squish me when we’re . . . when we’re doin’ it, you know?”

Buffy frowned thoughtfully, thinking back to her one sexual encounter. Willow saw her face and immediately started backpedaling. “Not that squishing can’t be good! Some girls like it! Squishing can be great! And, and, you know, there are ways to do it in which a girl wouldn’t be squished anyway and—”

“Wills, relax, it’s fine. And you’re right. There was some squishage happening. And it definitely was not the most fun. So good job you on going for compact. I’ll keep that in mind for when I’m seventy and want to jump back into the dating pool again.”

“Buffy! Don’t say that! I’m sure you’ll find someone before then!”

Buffy looked skeptical. “A sweet guy who’ll know about and accept the slaying? Does Oz have any compact cousins who are also werewolves?”

“Well, just the one that I know of, but you’ll need to wait like twenty years before dating him. I think he’s three now.”

Buffy gaped at her best friend, before breaking out into laughter. Willow joined her, and they were still giggling madly when they reached Oz and Xander, who were standing slightly further apart than they would have been only two months prior.

“What are you ladies discussing today?”

Buffy looked at Xander and smiled. “Oh, the usual. How dreamy Oz is.”

“Well, don’t let me get in the way of that.” He made a dramatic gesture with his hand. “Please, continue.”

Buffy rolled her eyes as the group walked away together, another unimportant conversation bubbling up between them as they talked around the Mayor’s rapidly approaching Ascension day.

* * *

Buffy didn’t think about Willow’s words when she met Parker. She just thought _Oooh, pretty boy who likes me_.

It went downhill from there.

There was less squishage with Parker than with Angel. And the after with Parker didn’t suck nearly as much as the after with Angel—it’s amazing how great a guy never calling you can feel when you compare it to a guy stalking and threatening your friends and loved ones. But it still hurt.

* * *

She didn’t think about Willow’s words when she was fighting Spike in the sunshine, sunshine that brought forth the deep blue of his eyes and the brilliant electric shock of his hair. She was too busy trying to save her life and the life of everything that walked in the sun—moms and kids and shushing librarians and Steve their postal worker and that dude who leered at her in the coffee shop—to think about anything besides surviving and then, as she yanked the Gem of Amara off his finger, winning.

* * *

Riley took her on a date. It was a sunlit picnic, and it was perfectly sweet and lovely.

And boring as all get out.

They had nothing to talk about. All of her stories revolved around something, eventually, needed slaying— _so_ not first date material—so she allowed him to do most of the talking. Riley’s stories revolved around his frat brothers and Iowa, neither of which she cared about and one of which she would never be able to leave the Hellmouth long enough to see, so why get attached to it? Why let a boy convince you that a cornfield rippling with the wind and drenched with gold in the autumn sunset could be beautiful when you were just happy to make it to the beach?

Besides, there was something else that was bugging her. It tickled at the back of her mind and the corners of her eyes, but Buffy couldn’t see it, couldn’t say what it was.

She was still trying to put words to what was bothering her when she slipped back into her dorm room. Willow was waiting for her. “Hey! How was your date?” Then she caught sight of Buffy’s heavy brow. “Oh. Not good? He’s a poophead and I’ve got a shovel and—”

“Relax ,Will.” Buffy sat with a sigh on her bed. “He was fine.”

“Then what’s with the face? Normally only French homework makes you look like that, and you’re not taking French anymore.”

Buffy’s face darkened even more at the mention of French homework, but she brushed the thought away with a sigh. “No, it’s nothing bad like Buffy and French—of the language or kissing variety. There’s just something bugging me, and I can’t figure out what it is.”

Willow looked at her speculatively. “Well, was it something Riley did?”

Buffy thought back to his innocuous hand on her back as he led her to the picnic, how he sat across from her and spent most of the picnic looking at her face rather than her boobs, how he was a perfect gentleman who didn’t even presume to kiss her at the end of their date. “No . . .”

“Was it something he said?”

Boring stories about boring frat boys and boring states? Dull, but not the thing bugging her. “No, not that either.”

“Well, is it Riley-related at all or something else?”

Buffy tentatively prod the thought at the back of her mind that stubbornly refused to take shape. It came back with an affirmative. “Yeah, it’s something Riley-related. I just don’t know what. It wasn’t a great date, but a boring date shouldn’t be causing any wiggage.”

Willow looked worried. “There’s wiggage?”

“Well, not like major wiggage. Just low-level wiggage because I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s like . . . it’s like knowing you’ve forgotten something important and you’re walking around all day waiting for that thing you’ve forgotten to ruin your entire day. Like a French test. Or that you didn’t put more tampons in your bag. Either is bad, but there’s always another girl who’ll have more tampons but you can’t borrow another girl’s time spent studying for a test, and you don’t know if this is the kind of bad that can be solved by talking to the girl in the stall next to you.”

Buffy flopped down on her bed, staring at the ceiling in an effort to force it to make clear what was bugging her. Willow continued to sit at her desk chair, staring speculatively at Buffy. She finally started to speak, slowly lobbing each word at Buffy to see if any got a reaction: “Well, he’s good-looking. Shoulders. Smile. Seems nice. Willing to chat. Not broody like—like other people we’ve known.” Buffy smiled at the ceiling at Willow’s clumsy save. “And he’s probably smart. He’s a TA after all—”

Buffy stopped her. “Is that it?”

“What? That he’s a TA?”

“Yeah. Isn’t it . . . not allowed for TAs to date students? Or at least kind of icky? Not like, professor-dating-a-student icky because ew, but icky?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Maybe?”  
“If you weren’t my best friend and you had heard I’d gone on a date with the guy who might be grading some of our papers, what would you say?”  
Willow’s answer was immediate. “That you were trying to make sure you got a good grade.” Then, as if she realized the words that had just poured out of her mouth, “Oh.”

“Yeah. ‘Oh.’ I mean, isn’t that part of TA training? It has to be, right? ‘Do not date students. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars’?”

“So you think the feeling is because he’s a TA and that’s weird or because he’s a TA and he should know better?”

“I don’t—maybe? Both maybe? It’s weird that the person I might make out with might also grade my papers, and it’s weird that I’m the one having the crisis about the kissage affecting the grade-age while the person who would be morally compromised isn’t. Or maybe I’m completely off and the problem is something else.” Buffy sighed. “God, I am so not good at being feelings-girl.”

“Well, even if it is something else, it sounds like you have enough other reasons to not, you know, go further with this.”

Buffy didn’t have the energy to tease Willow for sounding a bit like a disapproving chaperone for using a line like “go further with this” when discussing a relationship based on one mediocre date. Instead she just groaned and flung her arm over her eyes to block out the sight of the disappointing, answerless ceiling. “Well, at least I didn’t sleep with this one before knocking him out of the Buffy romance lineup. Guess science will never know how my vagina was gonna turn corn-fed Iowa boy evil.”

“Buffy!”

* * *

The thing tickling at the back of Buffy’s mind, driving her nuts that something was wrong with Riley without making it clear what it was? It wasn’t that Riley was a TA. (Although, yeah, Buffy’d taken a look at UC Sunnydale’s student guidelines and TAs dating students in classes they TA’d for was definitely listed in the “no” category. And while Buffy knew she was great, she didn’t think she was great enough for a man to risk losing his job based upon one interaction in which she’d dropped a book on his head. What was it with men who knew they shouldn’t try to date her trying to date her? Was she the only one with any kind of sense?) It wasn’t until a broken-hearted Willow had spelled her into the arms of her mortal enemy that Buffy realized what the problem was with Riley. Even then, it wasn’t until the spell had ended that she put two and two together. The problem with Riley wasn’t that they had nothing to talk about. It wasn’t his generic good looks or how _everything_ about him seemed a bit . . . generic.

No, it was that he was too stupid tall. While Oz wasn’t working out for Willow right now, before they had been so good together, and Willow herself had said that Oz’s compactness had been part of the charm. He had known the world they lived in, he supported Willow, and he was always there for her. And he had only left to learn how to control the wolf.

There weren’t too many men who knew she was the Slayer, were always around, could control their demon if they had one, and were compact and cuddleable rather than suffocatingly, neck-breakingly tall.

In fact, there was only one.

Well, there might be more than one, but there was only one she could think of who also made her heart race, who kissed like there was nothing more important in the entire world than the way lips could move against each other, and who could keep up with her in a fight and, Buffy suspected, when the fight became more horizontal and less fight-y. Also, that one was already evil, so even if her vagina did have villainous recruiting powers to cancel out the goodness of her calling, she wouldn’t have to worry about him becoming evil after they’d done the deed.

So yeah. Just the one. Just Spike.

And hey! Her vagina couldn’t make him more evil, and maybe it was like a double-negative. Her vagina’s evil-making powers could meet his already evil flesh and turn him good. Honestly, dating him could be just a new way to save the world.

And technically, she and Spike hadn’t broken off their engagement. They’d just declared how disgusted they were and stayed as far apart from each other as possible on their walk back to Giles’s apartment. Which meant, technically, still engaged. Which meant she had a chance to make this wild, improbable, probably-not-really-well-thought-through plan for Buffy’s happiness in romance to work.

She just needed to seduce her fiancé.

* * *

God, how do you seduce an evil vampire who has tried to kill you like five times already? _Cosmo_ did not include this info in their articles. And while “5 Reasons Bad Boys Are Good for You” was pertinent to her interests and now dog-eared for when it came time to convince Willow that she hadn’t gone off to be president of Whacko Land, the article didn’t actually tell her how to get the bad boy to fall for her so that they could get to those five reasons.

Maybe if she started wearing his favorite colors, she could use subliminal messaging to pique his interest (take that, Psych 101!) and they could eventually get to reason number four? It couldn’t hurt, right?

Besides, Buffy was in college. She could give it the ol’ college try.

* * *

It might be all the mucking around that had been done on his head or maybe the pig swill the Watcher was making him drink or maybe a century spent with a girl off her marbles had finally rubbed off on him, but the Slayer seemed . . . different. Or maybe just dressing different. Spike didn’t remember her wearing black and red so regularly before, but maybe he just hadn’t been paying attention back when he’d had his minions filming her as she fought through Sunnydale’s cemeteries.

Spike snorted. Sod that; he had been paying attention. This was new.

Maybe the girl was going through a late-in-life goth girl phase, getting it out of her system before she left her teens. He thought most chits went through that phase sooner, but what did he know? The only teen girls he spent any time around were Slayers, and they weren’t really par for the course when it came to teen girls.

Spike’s eyes moved from the point where the ceiling met the wall to covertly look at Buffy as she sat on the other side of Rupert’s living room chatting with her Scoobs about whatever was trying to end the world this week. A moment of bemused cataloguing of her appearance and his eyes went back to that same point as he continued his speculations, still tied to the chair the Watcher’d insisted he stayed in when not in the tub.

If she was going into a goth girl phase, what could he expect? Fishnets? Definitely more eyeliner. Probably some new, heavier boots. Would she dye her hair? His eyes skipped to land on the golden waterfall as it cascaded around her shoulders. He studied it for a moment before dismissing the idea. Girl didn’t spend years maintaining her hair that sunny golden color to sacrifice it on the dubious altar of being a punk rocker for a few weeks.

What else? Her jewelry might change. Maybe some chokers? Piercings? He seemed to remember that she wore more in her ears back when she’d been in high school. Maybe she’d get more piercings. Not anything too scandalous, nothing like nipple rings or a—his brain short-circuited for a minute—or anything scandalous. Chit’s too much a goody two-shoes. More exciting than ear piercings but less exciting than nipple ones would get her . . . a tongue ring? Spike looked at Buffy’s California smile before dismissing the idea and letting his gaze slowly move down her form. Not a tongue piercing, but a belly button piercing? He let the idea roll around in his mind. Yeah, that could work.

* * *

Buffy had no idea why Spike couldn’t keep his eyes off her while she and the gang were trying to figure out what the deal was with those commando guys, unless he was noticing that she was wearing his favorite colors and trying to figure out what about her was so attractive. Maybe her plan wasn’t so dumb after all. She smiled to herself before turning back to Xander. It might be time for the next part of her plan. Once she figured out what it was.

* * *

**Things Spike Likes**

  1. Violence
  2. ~~Drusilla~~
  3. Loud punk music _(ugh, no)_
  4. Smoking _(does slayer healing prevent cancer? no matter; it’s gross and I’m not taking up_ smoking _for a guy)_
  5. Blood _(also gross, and I’m not going to be his blood pimp or whatever)_
  6. Leather? _(I can get new boots? seduce him with my feet? how do you check if a guy has a foot fetish?)_
  7. ???



* * *

A perky knock on the door interrupted Spike’s arguments as to why the Watcher needed to share his scotch with him. Rupert went to answer the door with an audible “Oh thank God” in his wake.

“Hi, Giles!”

“Buffy, I wasn’t expecting you this evening. Come in. Is anything wrong?”

“Nope, nothing’s wrong. Just stopped by to pick up Spike so he could patrol with me.”

Spike looked up at her from where he was trying to discreetly nick the Watcher’s booze. “Are you off your bird? Why would I want to watch you stake my friends all evening?”

Buffy looked at him, a sparkle in his eyes that he refused to acknowledge was compelling and enticing, refused to admit he’d mourned the loss of when it disappeared once they realized their engagement was a spell. “Well, I was just thinking that while it makes sense the Initiative wouldn’t want you hurting humans, they probably wouldn’t worry about whether you could still hurt other demons. What better way to test that theory than patrol? And even if you can’t hurt demons, you could still, I dunno, cheer them on as they try to kill me?”

At the first sign of a potential loophole to his chip, Spike started clomping in his chair to get closer to his blonde savior. “Slayer, I’m your vamp. Get me outta here; let’s see what evil we can kill. Also, if I can’t kill anything, your hair’s dumb and a Fyarl with the flu could take you one-handed.”

Rupert was less enthusiastic. “Buffy, are you sure about this?”

Buffy walked around Rupert to get to Spike, quickly getting to work on the knots ostensibly holding him to the chair. “Giles, he can’t hurt me. I’ll be fine. And maybe Spike could help. We won’t know until we try. Besides—” she untied the last knot holding him to his chair prison “—do you really want to stop me from giving you a Spike-free evening?”

“When you put it that way, have fun. Save the world. Hit all the cemeteries at least twice. Sacred duty and all.”

* * *

Spike was still high off the joy of being able to kill things again when she asked him the question that had been bugging her all night: “Is my hair really stupid?”

He stopped his whirling around and ecstatic shouting at the sky to stride up to her. For half a moment, Buffy thought he might say something cutting, might try to pop her one in the nose to see if the Slayer was demon enough for the chip. Instead, he picked her up and began his whirling dervish impression again. “Pet, you’re bloody brilliant. Your hair’s bloody brilliant. So’s your stupid nose and that fist you use to rearrange my face and right now I’d be willing to kiss your left knee, that’s how brilliant and beautiful and bright you are.”

As she was being twirled under the sky by a handsome man who’d wrapped his arms under her ass in order to make the twirling happen, Buffy knew that most of what he’d just said was the giddiness of dusting three vamps. Logically, he had no desire to kiss her left knee. But she’d convinced herself she should seduce her former mortal enemy because of his _height_ , for cripe’s sake, and as she laughed and stared at the stars and felt something a bit like joy and peace sneak up on her, she decided that she’d take what she can get.

* * *

Spike started joining her for patrol. For the first three days of this new arrangement, Giles was convinced it was some sort of trap, albeit one he didn’t want to look into too closely, thrilled as he was to have his peace back for a few precious hours. Sunnydale, though, was weirdly quiet, probably due to those dumb commandos, and they spent more time strolling through the cemeteries and back alleys than they did getting in Spike’s nightly spot o’ violence.

Spike, Buffy learned, was weirdly hard to get information out of.

When he wasn’t being companionably silent, he never shut up. But it was never about anything important, like, say, whether black and red were his favorite colors on his girl or just on him. No, instead it was all updates on _Passions_ and how good those stupid blooming onions were and could she take him to the Bronze to seduce the recipe out of some waitress and actually he’s an adult man who could go to the Bronze by himself and Weetabix worked miracles in pig’s blood and it was a shame he couldn’t get unfiltered cigarettes anymore because it wasn’t like he was getting any deader and they just weren’t as good filtered and . . .

In the middle of a cemetery that was quiet except for Spike’s running commentary, Buffy came to a dead stop.

She’s such an idiot.

And then she hurried to catch up with Spike, listening to his stories and petty complaints, learning who the man was beyond just another vamp.

* * *

He had no idea why he joined her on her patrols.

That’s not true. He knew. He just didn’t like to admit it.

_Slayer_ was a slither of danger up every vamp’s spine. It’s the demon in them recognizing the thing born to kill them, so Spike would bet good money or kittens or whatever’s on the table that it’s true of all demons. The sense of her was a slither of danger, and every demon reacted differently. Some didn’t know what that meant and ignored it. Some saw the little girl and ignored what their better senses told them to focus on what their eyes were saying, and their eyes were worthless and screaming “prey.” It enraged some demons, so used to being the alpha that they become either petulant or filled with bloodlust and attack. Many just kept their heads down and hope to stay out of her crosshairs.

For Spike, that slither had always been slightly seductive for all its danger.

He supposed it’s like those humans who chase tornados. Here’s this force of nature that can and will destroy them without care or concern, and instead of hunkering down or fleeing, they followed it, saw where it went, considered it the chase of their life, tried to outlast it, and then hunted the next one.

Or at least, that’s how he thought about it once in the eighties when he got drunk on something poncy that made him introspective.

Buffy’s a force of nature. She’s the most destructive and seductive of all the tornados he’s faced.

So yeah, given a chance to walk by her side and see the world through her eyes and destroy right alongside her? He’ll take it.

Besides, all those idiotic demons that can’t seem to realize she’s their death sentence? Nothing draws them in like the Slayer, even when she’s not looking for a fight. They can’t seem to help it. And why go looking for a fight when, with the right company, the fight’ll come right to you?

* * *

It’d probably take him getting drunk on something else poncy to admit that he’d grown to like patrolling with her. Buffy could be quiet in a companionable way he’d never seen in all his research on her, and that quiet company was a balm against the time he spent alone or in the midst of the nattering Scoobies. But she could also be funny and incisive and snarky, and as the nights bled together he found himself looking forward to their patrols for reasons other than just the violence; he liked them for her. She wasn’t as bad as he had thought.

There wasn’t an alcohol in the world poncy enough to get him to admit that they might be almost friends.

* * *

**Things Spike Likes**

  1. Violence
  2. ~~Drusilla~~
  3. Loud punk music _~~(ugh, no)~~ (it might not be that bad? see if the record store has anything I can listen to)_
  4. Smoking _(does slayer healing prevent cancer? no matter; it’s gross and I’m not taking up_ smoking _for a guy)_
  5. Blood _~~(also gross, and I’m not going to be his blood pimp or whatever)~~ (could get Weetabix or burba weed for him, or is that too obvious?)_
  6. Leather? _(I can get new boots? seduce him with my feet? how do you check if a guy has a foot fetish?) (get new boots; Docs maybe? will any boot work? maybe something knee- or thigh-high?)_
  7. ~~???~~ Soap operas
  8. Whiskey, specifically Jack Daniels
  9. Driving _(can I find his car, figure out where it got towed to while he was in the Initiative? we can go for a drive then; driving’s romantic)_
  10. Poker
  11. Pool
  12. Those onion blossom things



* * *

“We need to find you a new place to live.”

The Slayer’s announcement came while he was sloughing as much slime as possible off his duster, and it took a minute for the words to get past Spike’s focus on the task at hand.

“Wazzat?”

“For you. A place that isn’t Giles’s. We need to find one.”

“Slayer, if you wanted alone time with the Big Bad, you just had to say something. We don’t need to find me a place.”

He appreciated the blush that stained her cheeks at his leer even as she rolled her eyes. “That’s it. I want you, I need you, oh baby, oh baby.” He appreciated her sarcasm and the gleam she got when she was mocking him as a friend rather than as an enemy even more. “No, we need to get you a new place because I’m tired of Giles looking me over at the end of the night to see how much you’ve corrupted me. For all he knows, I’m the one corrupting you with goodness or something, but no, I’m the one who gets the careful once over and leading questions. It’s the worst parts of coming home after a date—the weird looks at the person dropping off _and_ the subtle interrogation of the person getting dropped off—and it’s uncomfortable and getting old.”

“Don’t have to take me back to Rupes. I can walk you to your mum’s or the dorm.”  
“Please, Mom would welcome you in to drink cocoa and discuss the gallery—no punishment there—and Willow would interrogate me even more than Giles does if she saw you walking me home. Nope, we’re getting you your own place. You can’t kill anyone, but I might kill Giles if he eyeballs my neck one more time. Where do you want to live?”

And that’s how, with no money but plenty of time spent in Sunnydale’s finest cemeteries getting a feel for them, Spike found himself moved out of the Watcher’s and into a crypt in Restfield Cemetery with the Slayer acting as half his moving crew.

* * *

Turned out Riley didn’t need to spend time in close proximity to Buffy’s vagina to become evil. He had some of that already within him. And yeah, he tried to help when the Gentlemen came through town, but mostly he watched while Buffy and Spike took care of the baddies and then had the audacity to try to take Spike in to commando headquarters, claiming he was a “hostile.” She had to knock him out and drag Spike away, muttering about showing them both _hostile_ the entire time. Dumb commando. Stupid vamp. One emergency Scooby meeting later, and the gang plus Spike were spread throughout Giles’s living room.

“I don’t know that he’s really the bad guy, Buff. I mean, the man is just following orders. And they are _demons_.” The headache that had begun developing by the tension in the room that spiked when she didn’t tie up Spike (Ha! Spiked. Spike. Even with a headache she was good.) became more insistent at her friend’s words.

“Uh, Nuremburg Trials? Remember, Xan? Following orders is not an excuse for committing atrocities. And torturing and experimenting on sentient creatures counts as an atrocity, even if those creatures are demons rather than puppies or third graders.”

The one pair of eyes that stared at her in appreciation—Spike’s—didn’t do much to balance out the three pairs that stared at her in shock. At least Anya’s still held only their plain old disinterest.

“What? Am I the only one who’s heard of the Nuremburg Trials?”

Giles shook his head while he reached to polish his glasses. “No, I’ve heard of them. I just hadn’t realized _you_ knew about them.”

Buffy’s voice was a sharp shard of ice, unforgiving and cold: “I must not have had to save the world the night before we discussed that in class and so was actually able to stay awake for it.” She turned to the entire room. “Besides, if it’s the army and they’re trying to control demons, what do you want to bet they aren’t trying to control them to be in kiddie parades?”

Xander spoke up, a little less confident than his first time but still determined to make his point. “Again, Buff, they’re _demons_. Violent, vicious creatures? Ring any bells? Who cares what they want to do with them?”

“Some people think WWE wrestlers are violent, vicious creatures. Does that mean I should let the army kidnap and perform experiments on The Rock or some other dude with too many muscles in too little clothing?” Xander looked torn between stubbornly setting his face in his righteousness and expressing his shock that she could name a wrestler. Giles was considering her with a contemplative, watcherly look, one that always made her nervous. Willow seemed conflicted, eyes shifting to the side, while Anya’s face managed to combine boredom and tentative approval for Buffy. Buffy didn’t dare glance over to see what Spike’s face was doing. “Xan, if demons do evil, I slay them. If they don’t do evil, I let them be because, honestly, there’s enough evil happening I don’t have the time or the energy or the moral training to police shades of everyday wickedness versus daily demonic goodness. I just can’t. But no matter what the demons are doing, I don’t kidnap, torture, and experiment on them. And I’m on the one with the fancy schmancy sacred calling, no refunds, returns, or exchanges. What do these commandos have besides funding?”

“They do have a lot of funding,” Anya sighed wistfully. “Maybe we could get whoever’s underwriting them to underwrite us. You’re much more effective at killing things than those commandos, and we help. With the books and such. And I’m more than willing to declare my dating-a-friend-of-the-Slayer loyalties to whomever offers a paycheck and health benefits. Although, really, why is the Council not taking care of your health benefits? They like to boss you around; they should be providing for you.”

“Ahn, that’s really not the topic we care about—”

“Anya,” Buffy interrupted with a ruthlessness she never could have pulled off if her head wasn’t aching. “You make a very good point that we should discuss some other time.” The beaming grin Anya sent her way was the best reward Buffy could hope for this entire miserable night. “For now, though, do we have any ideas about what to do with these commandos? Because if not, I’m tired and want to go to bed.”

“Are you sure this TA of yours is a commando?”

“Giles, the only way I could be more sure was if he was wearing a sign saying ‘I’m an undercover operative kidnapping demons. Ask me how!’”

“Right, well, in that case, I suspect he’ll have some questions about how you destroyed the Gentlemen. See what you can find out then.”

Spike spoke up from his corner. “What if he and some of his pals decide to take the Slayer in to their demon farm?”

“Why would they want me? I’m human!”

Spike’s eyes drilled into Buffy’s, and the rest of the room faded away. “Yeah, but most coeds can’t knock out frat boys with one punch, let alone frat boys who hunt demons in their spare time. And Iowa doesn’t look like the kind of man to take being taken out by a girl well.”

“Oh yeah, because you’d be first in line to brag about all the times Buffy’s beat you up, Evil Dead.” Wow, her headache really did get worse every time Xander opened his mouth.

“The Slayer’s the best there is, Harris. There’s no shame in being taken out by the best.”

Willow’s concerned looks were boring into the left side of her skull, and Buffy could tell from Xander’s bluster that he was just waiting for the comment to come to him so he could snark back at Spike. Buffy was tired, headachey, crashing down after the high of beating a new weird monster, and uncontrollably flashing back to how Spike looked after his run-in with the Initiative. To top it all, she had an English Comp paper due in two days and a research project to begin work on for Psych, and the thought of spending even one minute more in this room made her want to cry.

“Well, if our plan is to wait for Riley to talk to me or attempt to kidnap me, then I’m going to go home. There’s papers to write, books to fall asleep on.”

Buffy didn’t wait to see how her joke would land, instead quickly gathering up her things and slipping out the front door. She breathed deeply of the cool night air for a beat and then began her trudge back to the dorm.

She remembered her Cruciamentum, remembered that terrible feeling of powerless and wouldn’t go back to a normal life for anything, but it would be nice if the tragedies weren’t coming seemingly every week, if she could have a moment for a bubble bath and a latte and maybe even to do some research for her essays. And Angel thought Buffy should find some normal guy to date! Even the normal guys she tried dating turned out to be adrenalin junkies or secret commandos, and when they didn’t, they got fed up with how she couldn’t spend any time with them. For all her plans to seduce Spike, what she would kill for right now was a friend she could rely on. One who could actually have her back on patrol, who didn’t look at her with that expectant how’s-Buffy-gonna-fix-it look the Scoobies had, and who would see when she was hanging on by a thread and do something to help, rather than waiting on her to say something to even notice her exhaustion before pooh-poohing it, making it clear that the Slayer was too super-human for human frailties.

A lighter snicked on in front of her, illuminating long, pale fingers as it moved toward the cigarette being held in the most infuriating mouth she had ever met. “You’re movin’ awfully slow tonight, Slayer. At this rate, I’ll be able to walk you back to your dorm twice before you even make it there once. You feelin’ okay?”

Buffy stared at Spike. He had her back on patrol, and she never had to worry that he would get hurt while she was slaying. He never waited for her to solve problems, but he always followed her decisions when it came to the big things. And he _knew_ her, knew when something was wrong, knew when she needed space or company, knew even when she simply walked slower than normal, apparently.

“Slayer?” His brow lowered in concern. “You okay?”

She didn’t need to kill to have a friend or even to have someone to walk the Slayer, She Who Makes Sure Everyone Gets Home in One Piece Before Heading Home Herself, back to her dorm. A smile stretched unbidden across Buffy’s face, belying the tears in her eyes. “Yeah, I’m okay.” Apparently, she already had a friend, and that realization was the actual best reward from this entire miserable night.

Spike shook his head at her but fell into step beside her without another word, smoking quietly while she thought.

* * *

Spike had no idea why the Slayer was sneakily trying to slip something into his duster pocket during their nightly patrol, but he let her think she had gotten away with it. Which meant it burned in his mind all night, taunting him with possibilities and improbabilities, but he waited until he was back at his crypt to pull out the bottle of black nail polish she had slipped him. It was a good thing he waited; his Big Bad reputation would have been shot if she or anyone else had seen him grinning like a schoolboy at her gift.

* * *

“How did you fall in love with Drusilla?” It was a question that had been bugging her for a while, but it was only in the quiet of their walk back to her dorm room that she dared ask it. Since the most recent fun Scooby meeting at Giles’s place when Spike pointed out the commandos would likely be after her as well, Spike had taken to walking Buffy back to her dorm after every patrol. It was completely unnecessary, but it was also nice being the one looked after for a change and the company was good, so after a few teasing comments, Buffy took Spike’s chivalry in stride.

“What?”

“You were with her for a century, but she’s also the one who turned you. What was it about her that made you think, ‘This girl is worth losing my life for’?”

Spike took a moment to think over his response, reaching into his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter then deliberately lighting a smoke and inhaling deeply. “She was the first woman who looked at me and saw me. Not just who I was then but who I could be. How could I not love her?”

He said it so simply, like it was a math equation with an obvious solution from back when math was simple and before all the letters were added to it. Two plus two equals four, and when you meet someone who sees you for who you are and not who time and choices and tragedies have twisted you into, you of course fall in love with them.

Actually, put like that, it made sense.

The companionable stroll was broken by Spike. “What about you and Peaches? What made you fall for that git?”

Buffy shot him a look but swallowed her instinctive annoyance because, well, what _had_ made her fall in love with him? When she had first met him, she had found him handsome but was also annoyed at his whole deal. She didn’t want to kill vampires, and his insistence that she did coupled with his constant disappearing act meant that she was pretty unimpressed with him. But, then, well . . . he was always there.

“What was that?”

Buffy looked into blue eyes, shocked out of her introspection. “He was always there. Handsome, mysterious, and there.”

She tensed, waiting for the snark-riddled backlash. For the “Knew you were blonde, Summers, but didn’t realize you got the hair dye that made you shallow and dumb too.” For the “You preach at me about what love is, and _that’s_ your great reason for romance? _Proximity?_ ” She had never traced it out before, never stopped to consider how she had started to care for Angel, and now she just wanted to go home and hide in her bed while she considered everything this said about her and him. Had it been love? Or had it been a case of Local Handsome Man Shows Interest? Could it have started as Local Handsome Man Shows Interest and turned into something more, something like being seen so clearly and known so deeply that you change your life? God, Angel saw her and thought the way to open conversation with her was to discuss how they both wanted to kill vamps! Then he saw her and decided the thing she wanted and needed was normality! Was she even in love with him still, or was she clinging to their Great Love so she would have an excuse to never care so deeply about another man again that when he left her it destroyed her, despite her great plan to romance her fiancé? But honestly, was she even holding on to their Great Love any more? Besides her frustration at him showing up at Thanksgiving, when was the last time she had even thought about him? Hell, when she’d pulled the Gem of Amara off Spike’s finger, she hadn’t even sent the ring that would make her love invincible off to him, more concerned about what Angelus could do if he had the ring and no soul than about what things could hurt Angel in LA. Instead, she’d tucked the ring inside the small hole in Mr. Gordo’s neck that had tragically come into being when she was seven and which her mom had never remembered to fix, knowing no vampires would ever look for it there. A few weeks later that same small hole was where she had tucked Spike’s ring, her engagement ring, and didn’t that say something about where Spike was now in her thoughts, especially in comparison to her Great Love?

Spike’s voice broke through Buffy’s brutal epiphanies. “Yeah, that’s what he does, pet.”

He could have said more, Buffy knew. Knew he could have ranted about how much he hates Angelus or told stories of how Angelus had broken girls like Drusilla. Could have made it hurt. Instead, he kept his voice calm and walked quietly beside her, the susurration of his duster brushing against his legs and their regular footfalls the only noises interrupting the night.

Did she even know what love was when it wasn’t tied up with pain? Should she even be trying to date anyone or trying to seduce her fiancé if her only experience with it was the watered down hurrah of a master manipulator? Buffy could feel a fine trembling beginning in her fingertips and moving up her arms. Before she could wrap her arms around herself—holding in the trembles and painful thoughts the way she had for years—a cool hand grasped hers, long fingers threading through hers. Not demanding anything. Not even offering anything, as offering would have meant she had to consider whether acceptance or rejection was the greater bad and, in the process, tied herself into more painful knots. Instead, the hand was just there, a presence, a reminder.

The one girl in all the world wasn’t alone.

* * *

It had been a week since the Gentlemen. Despite Giles’s predictions, Riley hadn’t tried approaching her once. When they were in class together, he just stared stiffly at anywhere but her and then conferred in frantic whispers with their professor as Buffy left the room.

Buffy thought she should probably be concerned. He knew there was something different about her, and Spike was right: it would be foolish to think the commandos who captured demons wouldn’t want to at least take a peak at her insides to verify she was human. And the fact that Riley spent so much time whispering at Professor Walsh whenever she did anything more interesting than sit and look bored meant that he either was trying to turn the woman against her to give her a bad grade or, more likely with her luck, her professor was also somehow part of the commandos.

Yay.

But honestly, she couldn’t make herself care. She had a friend. A friend who would walk her home and try to help when she was sad and maybe they’d never be anything more than friends—which would be a shame because Spike could kiss like a god and the bulge she had felt while sitting on his lap meant that it wasn’t just ego that had him tracing his hand down his chest to his crotch when they faced off against each other at the school all those years ago—but at least they were friends. She couldn’t rank the hotness of the Backstreet Boys with him the way she could with Willow, but otherwise, he was a kickass friend. Who could actually kick ass too.

And who, based on the shiny coat of polish covering his nails, liked her gift.

And it was much more interesting thinking of ways she could show her new friend that she cared about him than thinking about what Riley would eventually do to her.

* * *

“If you needed money and couldn’t steal to get it, how would you get it?”

“What are you on about now, Slayer?”

“Money. If you needed it, couldn’t steal it, how would you get it?”

“Is the ‘you’ in this question actually meanin’ me, or is the ‘you’ there meanin’ someone else?”

“Not hypothetical. You’re the you. Now would you answer my question?”

Why did he always end up with the chits who couldn’t say a coherent thought and then got snappy when he didn’t immediately understand them? And this was a bossy one too; at least Drusilla—

Well, Drusilla was bossy too, but she told him what to do through sly suggestions that were actually commands. At least Buffy was forthright about it.

And now that his brain was taking the terrifying turn of comparing his dark princess to the Slayer in such a way that the Slayer was coming out the winner, it was time to turn back to her question.

“I’d earn it by playin’ poker, prolly. Why?”

She glanced at him, a sideways look that did nothing to conceal the fact that she had something up her sleeve, something she was trying not to crow with joy over.

“Do you know what it costs to get a car back once it’s been towed away and impounded and then left for a few weeks?”

God, her riddles were almost as bad as Dru’s. And no pixies to blame ’em on. “No, and I don’t know why I’d care, either.”

“You’d care if one of those cars happened to be a 1959 DeSoto Fireflite with blacked out windows and—”

Spike whirled to face Buffy, gripping her forearms hard. “You found her? You found my car?”

Her smug little smile grew to a full-blown grin, one he could just kiss off. “Yep.”

One that he did kiss off, a hard, quick press of lips that left her gaping. “Where is she? We can go get her now.”

“Well, first we need 445 dollars, then we can—”

“Bollocks. I certainly didn’t ask for my car to be towed. They stole her; we can steal her back.”

“But—”

“Look, I parked her in the visitor parking of your school before I went to find you and got nabbed by the tin soldiers instead. There’s no sign about how long you can park in visitor’s parking, that you’ll get towed for leavin’ your car there too long. Ergo, they stole my car, and I’m not bloody well paying them for the privilege of stealin’ her. It’s a criminal system, is what it is.”

This close to her, Spike could see the struggle in her eyes between following the rules and going with Spike to get his car back. And if he had to pay to get her back, he would, but if he could get her back tonight . . .

“Okay.”

His jaw dropped. “What was that, Slayer?”

Buffy grinned, eyes sparkling again, this time with mischief. “Let’s go steal your car.”

* * *

She was right: going for a drive with the right guy was very romantic, and also ridiculous, what with the guy grinning like a schoolboy, patting down his car every few minutes as if to check for bruises, and enthusiastically narrating every bit of the car’s history. Spike could make her laugh in ways no one else could, and that evening, fresh off the high of breaking and entering with a capable thief on a mission of semi-righteousness and driving away from the Hellmouth for a brief reprieve with the windows down and her hair swirling and tangling with the wind, Buffy felt happier even than she did the night they’d been engaged.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said that this fic started out light and ridiculous and then got into Introspection and Feelings? Welp, feelings ahoy!
> 
> Poems are "You are tired (I think)" by e.e. cummings and "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost.

Three days after they had liberated Spike’s car, the event Giles had been hinting at darkly came to be: they ran into the commandos while out on patrol.

Commandos who stormed in trying to rescue the chit from the vamp at her side, only to get knocked back while said vamp cheered her on.

While they clearly tried to recoup and figure out what was going on while still constantly keeping their weapons on them, the Slayer shot Spike a look. He nodded slightly before moving to her back to keep watch and maintain an escape route for the two of them. With him unable to fight and who knows how many weapons the soldiers had between them, an escape route might be the only thing that kept them alive tonight. Or, well, her alive. Him undead.

Hands on her hips, she summoned every ounce of natural bitchy self, what he was sure she would call her Slayer ire. “Care to tell me who the hell you are and what you’re doing in my town?”

The commandos looked between each other, before one stepped forward and pulled off his mask. “Buffy?”

Spike tried his best to maintain a neutral expression and not roll his eyes at the overbearing idiot and his concerned puppy-dog eyes. _Who does this git think he is, the Great Poof?_

“Riley. So good to see you again. Thanks for all your help with the Gentlemen. Everyone loves a man who sits around and lets the women do all the work.” Buffy simpered at him, letting her voice sound sweet to hide the venom of her words, and Spike snorted out a laugh behind her.

“That’s Hostile 17 you’re with. He’s dangerous, Buffy. Please step away from him and let us help you.”

“I told you _weeks_ ago that I was engaged, Riley. Can’t a girl and her fiancé take a late-night stroll? And if I wasn’t going to let you kidnap him the last time we saw you, what makes you think I’m gonna let you grab him now? It’s really rude; you should find your own man.”

Spike blinked, refusing to let his eyes slide to the girl and away from the commandos even though he was desperate to figure out what the chit was playing at.

“He—he’s your _fiancé_?” The incredulous tone would be more insulting if his own brain wasn’t asking the same question in the same tone.

“Yes, and it’s really rude that you keep stalking him like this. I’m going to have to file a police report. Are you guys with the police, or are you, like, those dudes who’ve played too many video games and think they’re saving the world by walking around like assholes and calling yourselves vegemite?”

“I think you mean vigilantes, love.”

Buffy looked back at him for a second, big eyes simpering at him. “You’re so smart, sweetie. I love your big . . . brain.”

Bugger keeping an eye on the commandos, he had to watch as the Slayer looked back at their enemy, tilted her head to the side, and started twirling some hair around her middle finger while biting her lip, her eyes wide and soft and shallow. Spike didn’t think they’d shot her with something that had turned her into a simpering Valley Girl, but maybe . . . ?

“Look, Buffy, we’re with the military, and we can help you.” Riley edged closer to Buffy as the commandos moved into a tighter formation behind him, relaxing their flanks.

If it were possible, her eyes went wider as she took a step back. “If you’re the military, why aren’t you in Vietnam or somewhere? Why are you pretending to be my TA? That doesn’t seem very military to me.”

“I’m not pretending to be your TA; I _am_ your TA.” Those words were practically ground out between the git’s beefy jaws as Buffy took another step closer to Spike. “There’s some unusual happenings here that the military is very interested in. We can tell you all about it; just come with me.”

“Riley, I can’t come with you. I’m out on a date with my fiancé. I’ve told you about him before.” She talked to him with the patient, exaggerated tones of someone who didn’t spend a lot of time with small children and was now stuck with one and trying to get the small child to do something, like stop smearing jam on the walls. _And it’s working_ , Spike realized. The Slayer was purposely acting like a shallow Valley Girl and talking to them like they were the idiots, and they were relaxing, tightening their formation rather than spreading out, leaving them more room to escape, drawing their oaf of a leader away from his backup. Girl was _weaponizing_ being a blonde, and it was _working_. _No wonder I always lose to her; chit’s a bloody genius_. “I’m sorry if you thought we had something, but it was just one date, and then Spike came back to town and we’ve known each other for years and—”

“Buffy,” the wanker cut in, “your fiancé is a very dangerous man. He—”

“Spike? Dangerous? No, he’s a sweetheart; the leather just makes you think that. Like John Travolta in that one movie, you know, where he’s in love with Olivia Newton-John and his car? Besides, you’re the one with the weapons and calling everyone ‘hostile.’ If anyone’s dangerous here, it’s you and your friends. And who are your friends, anyway? Are you sure you haven’t played too many video games?”

“Maybe they got hit in the head playing too much of your American football, pet, just think they’re soldiers.”

Big eyes turned to Spike, nodding approvingly. “Oooh, I bet that’s it. Or maybe it’s a shared hallucination? We learned about those recently in class.” She turned back to an increasingly flabbergasted and annoyed soldier. “You should really get help, Riley. Those can be dangerous.”

“We’re not hallucinating; we’re with the military, and Buffy—”

“Does anyone really say they’re in the military? Aren’t they all ‘I’m in the Army’ or the Navy or whatever? Can you just _be_ in the military? And if so, wouldn’t you pick the sexiest one and say you’re from that?”

“Sexiest one, kitten?” She was only a step in front of him now, and Spike put a hand to the small of her back, feeling her tension even as she played at loose and relaxed.

“Everyone knows the Navy’s the sexiest. They have the best dress uniforms.”

“Tellin’ me I need to get a uniform, pet?”

She turned to look at him, leaving her back completely open. “You know you’re the sexiest, babe. You don’t need a uniform.” Her eyes yanked hard to the left, where a small stand of trees a thousand or so feet from them blocked the entrance to the Wilson crypt. When Spike gave a small nod, she turned back around while letting one of her soft hands slide down his arm to grab his hand. “Or is that why you’re playing dress up as soldiers? So you can get girls? ’Cause I gotta tell you, no girl wants a guy who has to hide who he is to get a girl.”

“Look, Finn,” another soldier spoke up. “Enough of this. Let’s just snag the hostile and go. Might as well grab the girl too. The professor wants her as well.”

“Maybe the real reason none of you can get a girl is because you don’t listen.” Buffy tilted her head and smiled a sweet smile that didn’t reach her eyes as she squeezed him hard. “I don’t want to go with you, and you can’t take my fiancé.” With that, the coiled tension in her body unleashed as she raced toward the trees, Spike dutifully following her.

In the first shouts of surprise from the commandos, Buffy muttered to Spike, “Nearest sewer entrance?”

“Two blocks south, middle of the street.”

“Good.” Buffy paused briefly to pull on the Wilson crypt doors enough to make the hinges squeal before continuing to run. Spike could run a little faster than her, but the speed she had as a Slayer was still far beyond what normal humans could do. Their only threat would be if the soldier boys shot them with something, and she had clearly thought to slow the commandos down first by moving unexpectedly and then by making them check out the crypt.

He had never stood a chance against her, mum with an ax or not.

They ran like the devil himself was following them. (Which, honestly, wouldn’t have been that bad; Spike had meant the demon the Christian’s devil had been fashioned after, and while the bloke liked things a bit toasty, he was more into the tempting than the torturing and destroying. Easy to get away from a git whose only weapon is a pitchfork when you’re running full-tilt.) Spike put on an extra burst of speed to reach the manhole cover blocking their escape, pulling it aside right as Buffy drew up alongside him. “In you go, kitten.”

With no more complaint than a wrinkled nose at the smell wafting up at them, Buffy slipped down the manhole, Spike following. He reached out to drag the cover back and hide their escape, and then he pressed her between his body and the side of the tunnel, straining to hear if their pursuit had followed them this far. And then stayed like that another moment, enjoying the feel of her strong, warm body against his.

“Can you hear them?”

With a sigh, he relaxed and allowed a whisper of space to come between them. “Nah, think they were distracted by that brilliant stunt of yours with the crypt. But they won’t be distracted for long.”

Buffy nodded and glanced at the tunnel stretching in either direction. “Which way should we trudge?”

When he had first come to Sunnydale, Spike had made sure to learn the sewer system. It was always good to have an escape route, but an escape route was only useful so long as you knew it wouldn’t leave you cornered somewhere worse than you were. He cast back to that knowledge. “Depends on where we’re goin’. What’s the plan, Slayer?”

He could see the gears turning in her head. “We just need a place to hunker down for a bit that they won’t connect with me if they’ve been following me.”

“I got a hidey-hole, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. Found it under my crypt.” He considered the tunnels, the location of Restfield in comparison to them and the underground space he had found under his crypt and slowly been expanding. His right hand grabbed her left one, and Spike tugged at her to follow him. “Trudge this way, Slayer.”

They stayed quiet for long minutes, moving as silently and quickly as possible, before Spike could no longer bear the question bouncing around his brain. “So what was with that act back there?”

“Hmmm?”

“Twisting your hair ’round your finger, asking them if they played too many video games, Navy has the sexiest uniforms. Put a lollipop in your hand and even I’d be convinced you never had a thought float across your pretty li’l head.”

Buffy chuckled, a sound without much humor. “Oh. That. If people think they’re smarter than you, they don’t treat you like you’re much of a threat. Even if they know you’re the Chosen One. Even if they know exactly what you can do. Even if they just saw you take out their entire squad.” She laughed again, somehow sounding even more bitter. He didn’t like it; Buffy’s laughs should be full of joy. “You were there for the Nuremburg Trials bit. My friends and Watcher don’t even think I’m smart, and they know my SAT scores and can’t count how many times I’ve saved the world. I’m not saying I’m a genius—I learn things better when I’m hearing or experiencing them than when I’m reading them and I’m, like, physically incapable of staying still for too long—but it takes brains to kick as much ass as I have. And if the people who are supposed to know me best can’t see that, there’s no way a bunch of Army-boy wannabes who need eight people to face one vamp could.” Buffy stopped walking for a moment to look at Spike, staring at him with a look that, for once, he couldn’t read. “You’re the only one who’s never underestimated me. You hired the best assassins to kill me, found a mystical gem so you could fight me. You’re the only one who’s always seen exactly what I am.” She started walking again. It took her pulling on Spike’s hand to make him realize he had to move too, had to in fact lead their little expedition. “So when I need someone to underestimate me, I just amp up the cheerleader-Buffy act from when I lived in LA.” She was quiet for a moment; the concentration on her face indicating that she was considering whether to tell him more, and he suddenly was ravenous for anything he could learn about her, anything she would share. “When I was a sophomore, I was the head of the squad, and the head cheerleader was supposed to date the quarterback. His name was Tyler, and he didn’t want to date anyone smarter than he was, especially when he was a senior and I was two years younger than him. Since he was an idiot, I got a lot of practice. It helped that I was pretty shallow before I was Called; I mean, God, I thought dating Tyler was the best thing that could happen to me.”

There was . . . a lot in that bit of monologue to unpack, to process, but one question leapt through Spike’s few mental filters and out of his mouth: “What happened to the wanker?”

“Who? Tyler?” Spike nodded, not trusting himself to not call the prat a more unpleasant name.

“While I was busy saving our class from vampires who had crashed a school dance—I burned down the gym and ended up getting expelled; you would have loved it—he was busy making out in his car with a girl I thought was my friend. Which left me free to make out with the guy who helped me save everyone—his name was Pike and he was even older than Tyler, irony of ironies.”  
“Not sure I followed that last bit, love.”

“He was an older man named Pike? You’re an older man named Spike?”

Well, that was a thought he wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Except, she had been with this Pike. Had snogged him at the very least. She wasn’t with him. Well, she was, literally, at the moment, but she wasn’t _with_ with him, not for anything like snogging.

Bugger, he touched the thought and now his brain hurt.

“He also had great cheekbones. Hunh.”

Was she . . . _comparing him_ to this bloke?

“Anyway, after I burn my high school gym down to create a nice vampire barbecue and we make with the smoochies and things seem like they might almost be almost good for the first time since Lothos killed my Watcher in front of me and we even go to _Vegas_ to hunt vamps, he decides this is too much for him, he misses being a mechanic and a layabout or whatever, and he dumps me. And then my parents lock me in a loony bin for telling them vampires are real and they’re the reason I burnt the gym down—not burgeoning pyromaniac tendencies like I’m pretty sure they hoped after the vampire spiel—and the only way I get out after weeks of forced therapy and being tied down and pumped full of drugs that make me dizzy and weak and see weird shadows and think I actually am nuts is by telling them I made it all up, that I lied. And because I’m a cute little blonde cheerleader whose parents are in the midst of a messy divorce, it’s easy for the shrinks to say I didn’t know what I was talking about and just acting out in a bid for attention.”

Buffy was breathing heavily by this point and gripping his hand with a brutal, unconscious strength. And Spike had no idea how to process all that history she’d just given him. No idea what to . . . Her first Watcher had _died_? _Joyce_ had locked her up? Some bastards had tied her down and shot her full of drugs? _Her_? Sunshine and strength soddin’ _personified_ and they made her feel weak and off her bird?

Buffy took a deep breath before releasing it with a slow, measured calm. “I . . . sorry. I didn’t mean to—I’ve never, ummm, actually told anyone all that. But anyway, that’s how I know. Lots of practice. Act like the person people think you are or want you to be, and they’ll ignore everything else.”

The silence between them was heavy. In his century of being alive, Spike had tried to comfort only two women: Dru and his mum. And while he knew crooning about the towns they could destroy together and the kids she could eat wouldn’t work with Buffy, he didn’t think the poetry reading and idle gossip and stories from around town that he used to comfort his mum would work on the girl by his side either.

Although, maybe it would? Both Buffy and his mum were full of an uncompromising strength, and they cared deeply for people. His mum wasn’t one to let people see when she was down, and she was always more concerned with how the people around her were feeling than with her own comfort and wellbeing. He’d seen this same characteristic time and again in Buffy when she was with her chums. Buffy and his mum kept their hurts close to their hearts. But then, what did it mean that Buffy had told him all that? That was a lot of hurts she had just unleashed on him, and if she hadn’t told her chums or her Watcher any of that . . .

The practical side of him said that it obviously meant she thought he didn’t count, that it didn’t matter what secrets she confessed when they fell on a dead man’s ears.

The poetry-loving romantic in him suggested that perhaps it meant she felt more comfortable with him than she felt even with her chums. Closer too, perhaps. Strong women don’t unburden their hearts to anyone except those closest to them.

“Right turn here, kitten.”

They had left the parts of the sewer system that were actively used for sewage sometime during Buffy’s story and had moved through the areas more commonly used by demons. They kept silent as they walked the slight upward slope that led to Spike’s downstairs, Buffy’s hand trembling with the weight of her confessions and Spike’s hand determinedly remaining calm and firm. He couldn’t give her much, but the least he could give her was a hand to hold, whether she wanted it or not.

They walked through the metal grate blocking his safe harbor from the rest of Sunnydale’s underground system. “Here we are, pet. One hidey-hole, perfect for catching some kip and hiding from overbearing blokes with bad haircuts.”

Spike dropped her hand to reach out for the few candles he had put down there and light them. With the light of their flickering glow, Buffy looked around the cavern they were in, from the tunnel they had come from to the ladder leading upward into darkness to the only real thing down there other than his excavating tools: a lush king-sized bed.

“Where are we, Spike?”

“Remember that crypt you helped me move into, Slayer?”

“I carried Giles’s television for you while you carried an armchair you rescued from a curb; it barely counted as moving.”

“Which is why I didn’t feel obligated to get you the traditional pizza for your help.”

“That and the pizza delivery man doesn’t do deliveries to cemeteries.”

“Have you ever, in your life, Slayer, let a man finish his explanation without interruptin’ him?”

Buffy smiled, a brief flash of humor and warmth that shouldn’t have delighted him the way it did. “Mmmm, I think I did, once. It was way dull.”

“’Course it was. No fun in letting a bloke get three words in edgewise.” Without conscious thought, he raked a hand through his hair, only realizing what he’d done after he’d dislodged some of the gel keeping his hair down. Chit was hell on a hairstyle. “Anyway, discovered this under a stone slab in the crypt. ’S not much, but I plan to get it fixed up real nice, make a nice safe place to live.”

Buffy picked up one of the candles as she explored. “It’s a nice space, but where’s the TV I dragged across town?”

“Upstairs. I don’t want those soldier boys knowin’ I’ve an escape route. If they ever find me, the best way to do that is to make them think the upstairs is all there is. My mini-fridge and chair are up there too.”

“That’s smart.”

Spike watched Buffy as she continued to move around the underground space. There was a weight on her, one that he had first noticed the night she had reported her sod of a TA was a commando and the Scoobies had gone apeshit over the knowledge, one that had only grown heavier with tonight’s confrontation.

“You okay, love?”

“Yeah,” a brave fake grin was shot his way. “I’m fine. Peachy. Just tired.”

Words trickled into Spike’s mind and out his mouth without his conscious thought: “You are tired, / (I think) / Of the always puzzle of living and doing.”

“What was that?”

“Nothin’, kitten. Just a—a thought. Something I read once. Why don’t you take the bed, get some shuteye. I’ll keep watch.”

Buffy looked dubiously between him and the bed.

“Look, Slayer, I promise the sheets are clean and you won’t get, I dunno, bugs or whatever else it is you chits worry about.” She still looked skeptical, and he began to get heated. “And I won’t do anything’ while you’re asleep, just keeping an eye and ear out for any unwelcome guests.” He was working himself up, eyes flashing with heat and frustration and voice quickly moving from calm to a snarl. “So I don’ know what your problem is, but if you want to stay away and keep your dainty princess self upright rather than take advantage of a little hospitality, that’s your say-so.”

“God, what is your damage?” Buffy stomped toward the bed, paused, then whirled around and stomped back toward Spike so she could repeatedly jab him in the breastbone with a finger bony enough to double as a stake. “Look, buster, you are incredibly difficult to be friends with, you know that? I wasn’t thinking anything like that! I was thinking ‘wow, that sure is nice of Spike to offer as he must also be super tired’ and ‘there is no where else to sit; would it be weird if I were to offer that he sit on the bed while I sleep?’ But you had to be a jerkface about it, and now I think I’m going to let you stand against that uncomfortable looking rock wall and think about what a doofus you are!”

With one last stab of her finger, Buffy stomped away to stand next to the bed and remove her shoes, and Spike tried not to let his thoughts dissolve into simply adoring how magnificent she was. “Buffy, I’m a right git. Dunno what I was thinking, guess it was just the stress, goin’ into a fight I couldn’t’ve even helped with, and I’m feelin’ like a right ponce. No reason for me to go off like that though. Sorry. You take the bed; I’ll be right by the ladder keeping watch.”

She didn’t even deign to turn around at that. “No.”

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“You know, for someone who just apologized for flying off the handle at me, you might want to consider waiting five seconds before doing that again.”

Spike opened his mouth, realized he had nothing to say that wasn’t another pointless explosion, and shut it again. Maybe she wasn’t the only tired one.

Buffy turned slightly, her back no longer completely to him, but only as much of her turned so she could see him out of the corner of her eye if she looked at him. Which she didn’t do, choosing instead to deepen the cave by burning holes into his floor with the force of her stare. “Standing by that ladder won’t be very comfortable.”

“It’ll be fine. I’ll start planning the next stage of my decorating.”

“Sit with me.”

“Slayer, you feelin’ okay? ’Cause I could have sworn you asked me to—”

She finished her turn and looked him directly in the eye. “Sit with me. Tell me the rest of that thing you read. I warn you, though, I’m a snuggler, and since Mr. Gordo isn’t here, if I fall asleep there’s a good chance you’ll be his stand in.”

Spike took a few steps closer to her, closer to the bed. “Who’s Mr. Gordo, pet?”

“My stuffed pig. I got him when I was three. Which side do you sleep on?”

 _Maybe I’m havin’ a fever dream_ , Spike thought. It was the only thing that could explain why he was telling her he slept on the left side, why she was telling him about her pig, why she was crawling into his bed and waiting while he removed his duster and kicked off his boots for him to do the same and then snuggling up against him, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning her head against his chest while he rested against the headboard. _Maybe I can stay in this fever dream until some wanker finally does end the world_.

“I’ve decided,” Buffy announced in a calm voice, “to act as if this is normal and not awkward in the hopes that it will make this feel normal and not awkward.” Green eyes glanced up at him. “Is that okay?”

“Fine by me.” _Just don’t bloody scoot down any further, else you’ll get a feel for something normal that’s gonna make this awkward_.

“Good. Now, what was that thing you were saying earlier about being tired and puzzles?”

“Slayer, you really don’t—” The arms around his waist squeezed tighter in warning. “Right then. ’S just a poem, written by a bloke named e. e. cummings who for whatever reason decided to not use any capital letters in his name.” Buffy wriggled deeper into his chest, into his heart. Then looked up at him expectantly when he didn’t say anything for a minute. “Right. Recitation.” Spike took an unneeded breath, pulling the scent of her hair into his lungs, and began:

You are tired,

(I think)

Of the always puzzle of living and doing;

And so am I.

Come with me, then,

And we’ll leave it far and far away—

(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,

And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—

Open to me!

For I will show you the places Nobody knows,

And, if you like,

The perfected places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!

I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

That floats forever and a day;

I’ll sing you the jacinth song

Of the probable stars;

I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,

Until I find the Only Flower,

Which shall keep (I think) your little heart

While the moon comes out of the sea.

At some point during his recitation, his hand had moved up to her hair, sifting through it gently while his voice dropped into the remembered cadence of recitations and school days. He hadn’t known many moments of peace during his life and longer unlife. He’d been too awkward and nervous a man to experience it, too excitable and violent a demon to care for it. But this moment? Lying in his crypt with his arms full of resting righteousness? “Peace” was the only word for it.

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Or the fact that he’d quoted the entire soddin’ thing, rather than just enough to satisfy her curiousity.

“Spike?”

“Yeah, Slayer?”

Her voice was sleepy, small. “I like that.”

“Glad to hear it, pet.”

“I’m tired. Tired of things that break and just . . . just tired.”

“I know you are, pet. I know.”

“I’m gonna go to sleep now.”

Spike hummed in acknowledgment and continued to stroke her hair as Buffy’s head grew heavy and her breaths fell into an even rhythm. As time passed and his senses stayed attuned for the sound or scent of someone creeping too close to their haven, Spike ignored how calm he felt, how normally he’d be itching for violence or his fingers would be twitching for a cigarette after so much time of inaction. He ignored how his earlier frustration at being unable to fight by her side against a human foe had disappeared into the ether. He ignored how the repetitive movement of his hand through Buffy’s hair soothed him, how every time Buffy wiggled a bit tighter or squeezed him a bit closer something inside him purred in contentment. He ignored how much he wanted her to wake up so he could see her sparkling eyes and battle with her wit. He ignored how the world was changing. He ignored it all so hard that, eventually, he fell asleep.

* * *

(What he really ignored was how she had called him her fiancé. Which was a brilliant distraction tactic, but one that made his heart squeeze up in ways that her ripping open the doors on that crypt hadn’t. And she had said she’d told soldier boy weeks ago that she was engaged, which would have had to been when Red had spelled them. Which meant that, for all her ranting about lips of Spike defiling her, she had never gone back to correct the git, just let him go on thinking she was off the market. Which made no soddin’ sense, ’cause with a forehead like that, he was practically a shoo-in to be a replacement for her Neolithic hunk of a true love if she wanted one. He even had the superior “let me save you, little girly, for I know better than you” attitude that Spike had previously thought Angel had cornered the market on.

Yet she had claimed him as hers, refused twice now to let the soldiers take him back and continue tinkering in his noggin.

What the buggering fuck did that mean?)

* * *

Buffy woke in the morning to the unfamiliar sensation of being held. She opened one eye, trying to push down the panic of having her arms wrapped around a hard body rather than the squishy softness of Mr. Gordo or her pillow. Wherever she was, it was dark, and she opened the other to try to get more light to her senses. With both eyes and the flickering light of a candle, she could make out the pale arm holding her, which led to a T-shirt covered shoulder, which led to a neck cricked at a terrible angle, which led to . . . Spike.

 _That’s right_ , she thought. _He was holding me._

Buffy looked at his face, noticing how beautiful he was. He had always been annoyingly pretty; she remembered being so pissed when they had first met, when he had announced that he was going to kill her, because why did someone with cheekbones like _that_ and eyes _so frickin’ blue_ have to be evil? It was like the universe was mocking her at that point. And then she had firmly shoved all thoughts of the hotness that was Spike firmly into a corner of her mind that she sealed behind a brick wall, perfectly content to leave those there for the rest of her life. Then Willow had done her spell. When her tongue wasn’t in his mouth, Buffy had spent her time engaged trying to kill demons and placate her panicked friends, and she hadn’t had a chance to really focus on him. But she did now, creeping her hand up to gently trace his brow, the proud line of his nose, and the cheekbones that should really be classified as a weapon and kept off the streets. A girl could get hurt on them.

He was beautiful, and he had stayed, had held her all night and was there when she woke, unlike every other guy she had tried to spend the night with.

What on earth did that mean?

* * *

Buffy could have left him sleeping, could have slipped into the morning without dealing with the fact that her first morning after had come with a guy she hadn’t even slept with. But she wouldn’t wish the misery of waking up alone after falling asleep with someone on even her worst enemy, let alone her sort of friend guy she was trying to seduce but really was mostly being friends with (God, was she just bad at seduction? Was that her problem?), and if Spike was no longer her worst enemy, just who was it now?

She snuck out of bed, pulled her shoes on, and willed all thoughts away as she turned back to the vampire cozily ( _sexily_ , her mind whispered) tucked into the sheets. Buffy reached out, shaking him on the shoulder to wake him, then shaking harder.

“Wazzat?” came the grumbly reply as one eye cracked open belligerently to look at her.

Buffy tried desperately to not think that was cute. _Damn it, too late, I already did_. “I need to go home and take a shower and change. The Buffy-sewer funk is not of the good. But thanks for . . . well . . . everything last night, and, ummm, I’ll see you later?”

Spike grinned as he rolled over to shove his face into the pillow that had been supporting her back. “Mmmm yeah, Buffy. See you, cutie.”

* * *

Now that the Slayer’d pointed it out, Spike couldn’t help but notice how all her little mates listened to her. Or, rather, didn’t listen to her. He’d slouched into the Watcher’s place that evening to give the Scoobies the rundown on the excitement with the commandos the night before to find them all in a snit. Apparently, Buffy’d started the tale without him, and they were all busy talking over her, getting their two cents in and ignoring the fact that the Slayer was sitting there in front of them in one piece, no thanks to any of their efforts.

The Watcher was all in a kerfuffle about how reckless she had supposedly been while also frustrated she hadn’t learned more about the soldiers. Red was all fluttery and concerned, which seemed to be her natural state when slayer-type things happened as far as Spike could tell. Harris was vacillating between trying to defend Riley, shout him out as a good potential boyfriend (“He was concerned you were with the Evil Dead, Buff! He’s concerned for you and recognizes the inherent dangers of evil! What more could you want in a guy?”), and bemoan that she had hidden out with Spike, while tossing in a few crude, thinly veiled comments about her boiking the undead.

 _What I wouldn’t give_ , Spike thought, _to have this chip out of my head long enough to permanently shut that git up. Chip could go right back in afterward, and I would dust a happy vamp._

“Look,” Buffy tried taking control of the discussion again, “obviously I’m fine. Spike is too, based on how he’s trying to slide into the kitchen and away from all of this, so you can stop worrying. I’m the Slayer; going out last night to patrol was not any more reckless than anything I’ve ever done. And Xander, if you don’t shut up about who I do and do not sleep with, I’m going to have to start asking some uncomfortable questions about why you care _so flipping much_ about who I fuck.”

That shut Harris up for a minute, but Red and Rupes steamrolled right back over her, so it didn’t make much of a difference. He watched Buffy’s shoulders bow under the weight of the words coming at her and felt prickles of unease; he didn’t like how tired these people who were supposed to love her made her. It reminded him of how his mum used to lie back exhausted after the society ladies left after one of their “let’s visit the poor, ailing Mrs. Pratt” moments of self-congratulatory do-gooding. He’d wanted to punch those women out then for not seeing what his mum needed and instead adding to her burden. He wanted to punch Buffy’s friends out now.

He couldn’t punch them now, though, not without putting himself in a world of pain. So he interrupted them.

“Watcher, the Council of Wankers must have some data on how long slayers last once they’re called. Tell me, what’s the average? Six months? A year? Four days?”

“I beg your pardon? I’m not sure what that has to do with—”

“Slayers. How long do they last on average before they kick it? Surely with all the studying you blokes do, someone’s taken the time to do the math.”

All her little pals were twittering again with the Watcher putting up the most bluster, but Buffy just looked at him steadily for a minute before turning to her Watcher. “I’m curious too, now. Tell us, Giles, what’s the average? The mean? Or do I mean the median? Mode, maybe?”

“Mean, pet.”

“Right, that one. Giles?”

The Watcher pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and his glasses off his face, getting to work on cleaning them like that would prevent him from having to see what Spike was getting at.

“A little more than seven months. Seven months and twenty-three days, to be precise.”

Didn’t that beat all? The Council of Wankers couldn’t be bothered to move their fat, pasty asses to provide any real backup for the girls they purportedly supported, but they could calculate out to the _day_ what the average lifespan was once the powers had gotten their fingers into a girl.

Harris and Red were mimicking goldfish at the current moment, but he knew that wouldn’t last nearly as long as one could hope. “Slayer, how long have you been at this gig?”

Clear hazel eyes met his. “I was fifteen when I was called. So three, almost four years now.”

Spike turned to her friends. “And the fact that she’s survived the average five times over now hasn’t told you anything? Yeah, she’s got you all and her mum in her life, and you keep her tied here, keep her going, give her a reason to keep trying when every night is death and pain and stress, but if she weren’t a _bloody amazing Slayer_ she would have kicked it years ago. Or stayed kicked the first time, if what I’ve heard’s true. And your petty whinging and second-guessing and trawling over her every move and thought aren’t helping keep her alive the way your support and friendship does. She’s alive, she’s saved the bloody world more times than any of you sods probably care to count, and if you want to keep her that way, you might want to consider shutting your gobs and bein’ supportive for once.”

Spike wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the Watcher somehow managed to get even more aggressive with cleaning his glasses. “Now, I don’t think—”

Spike glared at the man. “No, you don’t think. You try to tell her what to do, even when followin’ her instincts and judgment is clearly working for the Slayer.” He turned to Harris: “You pick over her every move an’ make her doubt herself, which is gonna get her killed someday when she doubts herself at the wrong moment. And as if all that isn’t enough,” Spike’s attention turned to Red, “you whammy her with bloody spells like she’s your personal Barbie doll that you can make do what you want and damn the consequences.”

The faces around him were a comedic study of hurt and self-righteous anger—entertaining when he couldn’t get his evil in through more physical means—but the face that caught his attention was Buffy’s. It was a face that screamed her annoyance at and frustration with him. Except for her eyes, which gave the whole show away. Her eyes were bright with gratitude and appreciation, a warmth that had never been shot his way quite like that in his entire life and unlife.

It took all his experience of hiding his emotions from Angelus to keep him from beaming like a besotted schoolboy at her.

* * *

Buffy had been very intentional when she called this meeting; she had made sure that Anya was taking human-girl cooking lessons with her mom so the ex-demon wouldn’t be around provide a bluntly honest running commentary that would get everyone’s backs up, and she had made sure that Spike was off playing poker so he wouldn’t be around to also get everyone’s back up.

She didn’t like how her own back felt vulnerable without Spike around to guard it, but the fact that Buffy didn’t feel comfortable meeting with her own friends without backup said more clearly than anything else why this meeting was necessary. That and the fact that Spike had been right the other day, but she knew nobody would listen to him no matter how right he was.

They all sat in Giles’s living room, and she waited for the chatter to die down, her heart beating a nervous thumping rhythm in her chest. When at last all the confused talk and not-really-funny quips had died down, Buffy began.

“We are here because I’ve realized some things need to change.”

“Buffy, my dear, what are you—”

“Hey, Buffster—”

“Buffy—”

“The first thing,” she interrupted ruthlessly, “is that I need you all to listen to me without interruptions. No jokes, no exclamations of dismay; I just need you to listen.” She took a deep breath, then dove into the fray. “We’re friends, but you all also want to help me with being the Slayer. Which is great! I love having help! But at the end of the day, whether the world gets destroyed is on me. Whether a teenager or someone’s grandma makes it home at night is on me. Not my friends, not my Watcher. Me. And so, when it comes to slaying stuff, you have to listen to me. It’s my job to go out and perhaps die, again, so I’m going to be the one making decisions. Not a committee.”

Mouths dropped open, the glasses were back in Giles’s hand ( _What does he do to them that they need to be cleaned every five minutes? Do I even want to know?_ ), and Xander was about two seconds away, she could tell, from saying something that would make her lose her chill. Buffy spoke again before her two seconds were up. “That doesn’t mean I don’t need you guys. You’ve been,” she paused, tried to push past her disinclination to verbalize her feelings and put all that they meant to her in words. “You’ve been _everything_. Xander, you saved my life and gave me the best birthday gift a girl could ever ask for, and I’m still kind of sad we decided that the rocket launcher had to be returned. Willow, you’ve always been support-o girl and helped with research and cheered me up when this has all gotten to be too much. And Giles, I couldn’t do this without you. I’ve needed your wisdom and support and encouragement so many times, and you’ve always given it. But guys,” and this was going to be the hard part, “I’ve changed. _We’ve_ changed. As people. And as friends. As individuals. But we haven’t changed as a group. And we need to.”

“Giles,” she turned to her Watcher, “we’re no longer in high school. I’m no longer seeing you every day to check in. Which is great because it shows I’ve learned what you’ve taught me and I no longer need to rely on you like I used to.” His face paled, and Buffy hurried on. “Which is not to say I don’t still need you. I do! Totally of the needing here. But if I need you less and you no longer work at the high school library because it’s too exploded for that, then what are you doing every day?” _This is why I avoid words_ , Buffy thought, taking a deep breath as she moved on. _They’re so much harder than punching things_. “I think you’re bored. And I think you might be drinking too much because of that. You were the curator for the British Museum, for Pete’s sake. Museum people called _you_ when they found that big Acathla rock. I need you to still live in Sunnydale and be my Watcher, but I think you need to do something more than shoot me bad-guy info; use that big brain of yours and museum or library or consult it up or something.” She took another breath, tried to make a joke in her head about how she was getting her mindful breathing in today rather than focusing on the next part. It was going to be the hard part, the part where she was all honest and vulnerable and she _hated it_. “I need you to be happy here,” Buffy confessed in a whisper, “because I can’t lose you. Every other adult-type man has left. Has left me. You can’t leave.”

You could hear a pin drop with her confession. Even the air felt still. But Buffy was on a roll now. She had gotten through her first confrontation, and nothing could stop her now from facing Willow.

“Wills, I love you, and it’s so cool seeing how you’re becoming an amazing witch. You used to only be able to levitate pencils, and now you could probably levitate all the furniture in this room!” The grin that flashed across Willow’s face was small but smug, and Buffy knew she had to say her next bit. “But I think you need a teacher. Not to learn how to be a witch, ’cause clearly you’re rockin’ that on your own, but how to be a witch who knows what she can and can’t yet do, a witch who accomplishes what she wants and doesn’t accidentally curse her friends.”

Willow winced and opened her mouth for the innumerable _I’m sorrys_ that inundated them after her spell yet did nothing to atone for the pain she’d caused. Buffy held up her hand to ward it off. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you more when Oz left. I think I’m still figuring out the college-friend-slay thing, and I’m probably going to mess it up again. But that doesn’t change the fact that you hurt us all without even meaning to. Which is somehow worse than trying to hurt us and succeeding. You could probably be one of the greatest witches out there, Wills, but I think Xander would prefer it if you got there without him being made a demon magnet again. And Giles without going blind again. And me without you devastating me by giving me all the happiness I haven’t had since before Angelus and then tearing it away again.” _Damn, I did not mean to bring out that confession._

Willow’s eyes were a combination of guilt-stricken and mulish. So Buffy brought out her big gun. “Besides, I bet you could learn so much more if you had a teacher. It’s like with computers.” Buffy flashed what she hoped was an apologetic glance at her Watcher. “You learned a lot figuring them out on your own, but didn’t you learn so much more when you worked with Ms. Calendar? And didn’t you learn why you should code or whatever in one way rather than the other, even if the other way seemed easier or better initially? Didn’t learning the basics from her make it easier to later figure things out on your own?”

Willow had turned thoughtful. “I bet Giles would be able to put you in touch with some magic teachers,” Buffy finished, a bit impish to cover how determined she was to make Willow see reason. “Maybe one who could tell you more about his Ripper days too.”

Giles’s predictable bluster at the mention of his alter ego broke the tension and got Willow to smile for the first time since Buffy had mentioned the spell gone awry. She wanted to lean back, let the jokes continue, let everything get back to normal, but, well, she still had one more person.

“Xander.” Her friend jumped a bit at being addressed. “You’re one of my best friends, and I’m sorry you felt left behind when we went to college. It’s the college-friend-slay thing again, and I’m still figuring out how to do everything. But you’ve found a job you really like and are good at, and you’ve got a girlfriend whom I don’t always understand but you really like, and things seem to be awesome in Xand-land, and that’s great.”

“But?” he prompted.

“Hunh?”

“You’ve had a but for everyone else. What’s mine?”

Buffy grinned ruefully. “But I need you to stop trying to control my life and mocking me when I make mistakes. I don’t want to date Riley, I will _never_ want to date Riley, and you mentioning him every five minutes isn’t going to make me want to date him. Although,” she added speculatively, “it will give me some questions about whether _you_ want to date him.”

Xander spluttered, and Buffy tried half-heartedly to hide her grin. “But seriously, Xand, I’ve dated a lot of duds. The Buffy radar for jerkfaces is not good. But your dating resume features a bug lady, a mummy, Faith, and _Cordelia Chase_. The _best person_ you’ve _ever dated_ is a thousand-year-old ex-vengeance demon. You might not have been crazy about Angel, but neither you nor I had any way of knowing he would become Angelus. And other than Angel, everyone I’ve dated has been better than the people you’ve dated up till now, yet I still supported you when you were kissing them, even, again, can’t emphasize enough, _Cordelia_. So unless I decide to start dating Angel again while his soul is all shaky and liable to fly away without notice, I don’t want to hear any comments or jokes about whom I date, nor do I want any more helpful suggestions on whom I should date. Because your taste is no better than mine.”

“But, Buffy, I—”

“No buts, Xand. If you can’t be happy for me, you can at least be quiet. And speaking of being quiet, I need you to stop throwing my mistakes in my face. I make them, and I always pay for them. You constantly bringing them up just rubs salt in the wounds, and it makes me not want to talk to you about things that might go wrong or that have gone wrong and I need help fixing. I don’t bring up your mistakes all the time and make you feel bad about yourself; you need to give me the same respect and trust that I’m not the same girl I was two years ago when I slept with Angel, again, without having any way of knowing what would happen.”

“Buffster, I don’t do that! I’m your friend; I just want what’s best for you.”

“Yeah, you do. You make me doubt myself, and Spike was right: one of these days, that’s going to get me killed. You have to let me make choices. If I want your opinions, I’ll ask for them. Sometimes I’m going to make mistakes, but that’s life.”

“Yeah?” _Great_ , Buffy sighed internally, _he’s belligerent now_. “Since when are we listening to Evil Dead Junior? Besides, when you make mistakes, people get killed.”

“Xander!” Willow exclaimed.

“Yeah?” Buffy responded, voice hard. “Well, when you make mistakes, you almost become fertile ground for a lady bug demon to lay her eggs. Or you try to make out with a mummy who’ll steal your life force. Or you get caught by a vamp. Or you make out with your best friend and ruin both your relationship and hers. Or you _fuck Faith_. And I have to clean up your mess.” She was being cold, brutal. She didn’t care. “Whereas when I make mistakes, I clean up after them, even when that means sending my boyfriend to hell. And I spend every night fixing other people’s mistakes—mistakes that led to them getting turned by vampires or about to be eaten by vampires. Mistakes that summon demons or allow vengeance spirits to rise. I might be the Slayer, but that doesn’t mean I’m perfect. So how come you and everyone else in this shitty world get to make mistakes while I have to be perfect Miss Buffy, never allowed to step one toe out of line without being hauled over the coals for making or almost making or being in the vicinity of something that might be a mistake and then being reminded of every single time I’ve ever messed up?”

She didn’t mean to end this intervention with shouting, but she was so sick of it, so furious, so _tired_. Tired even of shouting, and her next words were quiet and weary: “I don’t need you or anyone else to remind me that Ms. Calendar should still be alive. That Jesse should still be alive. That Ford should have gone out because of the cancer and not at the pointy end of my stake. I’m the Slayer; when I mess up or even move too slowly, people die. And I am _always_ aware of that.” God, she was tired. Tired of being looked up to. Tired of the hypocrites. Tired of things that break. With those last words, Buffy fell back into her chair, exhausted. “I love you all, but we’re falling apart. Something’s got to change. If there’s anything you need me to do different to be in your lives, floor’s yours. Otherwise, I’m going home.”

The clock ticked the seconds loudly away while they sat in quiet. Every so often Xander would open his mouth, catch Buffy’s gaze, and then shut it again. Willow and Giles just looked thoughtful, with Willow also looking a bit squirmy. Everyone looked uncomfortable. After the silence had stretched on awkwardly long enough, Buffy stood up. “I’m gonna go patrol. Mom’s been wanting to see me, so I’m gonna spend the weekend at home, Wills. I’ll see you Monday, unless you want to talk sooner.” She turned toward the men. “Same for you guys. You know where to find me.” With that, Buffy grabbed her jacket and the weekend bag she had already packed, and she headed out into the night.

Where she ran into Spike.

* * *

“Hello, cutie.”

Things Spike wasn’t thinking about right now: How the tense line of the Buffy’s shoulders lost some of that strain when she heard his voice. How he had folded out of his poker game early because Buffy wasn’t nearly as sneaky as she thought and he knew something was up and wanted to be there for her if she needed him. How she had stood up for herself and told her friends “Spike was right” like neither of those things were earth-shattering changes for her.

“Hey, yourself.” Her smile was oddly soft as she looked at him, another thing he wasn’t thinking about. “You know, it helps that Jeff also smokes out here, but if you keep leaving all your cigarette butts in that flower pot, Giles is going to figure out how much time you spend just outside his front door. He’s not that clueless.”

“Who the fuck’s Jeff?”

“Giles’s new neighbor? Well, new as in, like, two months ago? How have you not seen him out here smoking? Apparently, his boyfriend doesn’t want Jeff smoking in the apartment any more than Giles wanted you smoking in his when you stayed with him.”

“Right. Seen the bloke around. Jeff, hunh?” He took a last puff before stubbing his cigarette out in the large ornamental flower pot between the two apartment doors. Spike started walking then, with Buffy slotting in on his right like it was her place. _Which it basically is. What with all the walking around town and fighting we’ve been doing._ His fingers itched for a cigarette, but he didn’t know what Slayer healing could do to prevent cancer, and he wasn’t willing to risk Buffy’s lungs while they were walking next to each other. He could wait until she was beating up on some vamp to get his fix. _And now I’m worryin’ about the Slayer’s lungs. ’Nother thing to not think about._

 _Actually, why not think about it? Been spendin’ all my time with her, showed her the bolt hole under my crypt. Chit hasn’t been the uptight bitch she can be, not to me, not in a while. Helped me move even. So I can . . . care for her. Be concerned. That’s just what friends do. We can be . . . friends._ He thought the word carefully, rolled it around in his mind to see if anything in him protested. And there was some grumbling, not bad grumblings, just something in his chest—or maybe it was his head—didn’t quite like the word “friends.” _Well, tough shit. ’S what we are. Friends. Care for the girl, yeah? Want her to be happy and healthy and all that rot. Like spendin’ time with her. Besides, what else could we be? Not like all that rot Dru said about me bein’ in love with the Slayer could possibly be . . ._

_. . . true._

_Balls._

The thing in his chest that had grumbled at “friends” positively purred at the thought of being in love with Buffy, at the memory it flung to the front of his brain of her claiming him as her fiancé to the military sods the other day. It reminded him of what she felt like in his arms, what bespelled kisses tasted like, how her shampoo-commercial hair bounced around her as she moved, and how her eyes lit up sometimes when she smiled at him.

_Bloody._

_Buggering._

_Fuck._

He didn’t just like the idea of being in love with the Slayer. He was in love with the Slayer. With Buffy. Buffy bleedin’ Summers. His former enemy. Current friend. In love. With her.

“I thought you had a poker game tonight.”

 _Thank fuck for interruptions._ “Did. Cashed out a bit early though. Thought you might like me to join you on patrol. If you’d rather be by your lonesome, though . . .”

Buffy glanced up at him, smiled, a brief, bright thing shooting across the sky just for him. ( _And there goes poncy William, the love-struck poet._ ) “Hmmm, would I rather be by myself after blowing up on my friends or would I rather be distracted by gruesome tales from kitten poker. What to choose . . .” Her voice trailed off with exaggerated consideration, a slim finger tapping dramatically against her chin in thought and focusing all of Spike’s attention on her lips.

“Oi. Never said I was going to tell you what happened tonight at the game.”

“Well then, I guess I’ll just have to ask Clem to patrol with me. He’ll let me know.”

Spike snorted. “Yeah, ’cause he’s an insatiable gossip. Useless in a fight, though.”

“Mmmm gossip or fight assistance?” That finger was tapping against her chin again. It was going to be the death of him. “Think I’m going to have to go with gossip this time, Spikey. I still don’t know whether Bella ever asked out that girl.”

“Sod still hasn’t gotten up the guts. Think his girl will be better off if she asks him out on a date. And I don’t think he’d appreciate your nickname for him if he knew it, either.”

Buffy waved that consideration away. “But does she even know he’s interested?”  
“She’d have to be missing all six of her senses to not know. Bloke couldn’t be more obvious if he tried.”

“Isn’t it just the five?”

“Nah. She’s a Fegrahn. Got telekinesis too.”

“Right.”

The quiet fell between them again, something calm, something comfortable. Until, “So, how much did you overhear?”

Spike kept walking, hoping that if he didn’t say anything she would let it—“Spike, seriously, how much did you overhear?”

 _Worse than a soddin’ dog with a bone, my Slayer_. “Dunno what you’re talkin’ about, pet.” _Yeah, ’cause that’ll really throw her off the sent. Wanker._

“Spike, you’re not this dumb.”

There were two responses he could give to that: mulish offense, which would result in her stomping away or punching him in the face before stomping away, or acknowledging he’d heard everything, which would result in her punching him in the face but maybe she’d then let him wrap his arm around her and that bit in his chest that had forced him to realize he was in love with Buffy was practically ecstatic over that possibility. Only one way to find out. “’F I didn’t hear the whole thing, then I heard most of it.”

She was quiet for a minute at that, then, “What’d you think?”

Buffy was looking up at him with those big, open eyes, and he hadn’t been good at keeping his mouth shut ever before, but now that he knew he was in love with her . . . “Thought you were brilliant, pet. Bet you looked like a right Valkyrie, tellin’ ’em off. And no, you didn’t tell ’em off too much; you were as full of good as you ever are while also makin’ sure they needed to get their heads outta their asses and stop bein’ such terrible friends to you. Tough love, yeah? Your mum would be proud for that one.”

She chewed on her bottom lip, one of her more annoying habits, what with how he couldn’t soothe that poor lip when she was done hurting it. _How the fuck did it take me until now to realize I’m in love with her?_ “You don’t think I was too harsh on them?”

“Buffy, luv, nothin’ about what you said was harsh. Just true.” Spike thought for a moment. “Well, maybe you were a little harsh with Harris, but the boy deserved it. ’Sides, there’s nothin’ harsh about tellin’ people what you need for them to stay in your life, yeah? It’s just about havin’ boundaries, makin’ sure you can be in the relationship and be happy an’ healthy. Not like they can read your mind, so if you need them to do somethin’ different, you have to say somethin’. And you did.”

“But isn’t that— shouldn’t I do more for them?”

“Bloody hell, pet. What more could you do for them?”

“You did everything for Drusilla! I don’t know what I could do, but I could do something! I could be a better friend to Willow and listen more and eat more ice cream with her while we discuss the magic even though I totally don’t get it and figure out how to help Xander stay connected and listen to him moon over Anya and maybe listen when they think I should date someone normal only totally not Riley because no and check in with Giles more so he feels needed and maybe research with him and—”

“And get yourself so bloody twisted up you’re no longer Buffy at the end.”

Big green eyes stared at him. “Hunh?”

“You can do all those things—you can be the person and Slayer they think and want you to be—but in the end, they’re just your friends. They could leave you at any time.” He could see her eyes start to flash with a retort, and Spike quickly continued on. “Not to say they will, but pet, what usually happens when you lot go off to college? You go to different schools in different states and you stay in touch for a bit, but you’re busy with new people and new things, yeah? So you stay in touch, but that gets less an’ less frequent. You still see each other sometimes—summer break and all that—but then you get jobs an’ you stop worryin’ about stayin’ in touch, and when you do, you realize you’ve both changed and aren’t the friends you used to be. You’ve grown apart. Nothin’ more normal than that. And yeah, some friends get closer as the years go on, but most don’t. So, if they were to leave you all tomorrow—their fault, your fault, no one’s fault—would you like who you are? Or would you look at yourself and find that you’d twisted yourself all up trying to meet their needs and expectations that you don’t even recognize yourself anymore?”

Buffy was gnawing on her bottom lip again as they continued walking. Her face looked troubled, and her hands jerked convulsively—a move that looked like she wanted to make fists but maybe meant that she was envisioning wringing his neck, and well, the words were already out there so he might as well . . .

“Look, Slayer, I loved Drusilla with all I had. She was my everything, and I would have destroyed myself and the entire world if she had asked it. Nearly did with that soddin’ Judge nonsense.” Fuck, he needed a smoke for this one. Spike reached into his duster pockets to pull out his cigarettes and his lighter. They were in a cemetery now, and he could lean against a crypt wall and stay downwind of her. It would have to do, because Buffy needed to hear this, he needed to smoke to verbalize it, and he couldn’t worry about her lungs and get through this. “I twisted myself right up tryin’ to be exactly who she needed, an’ you know what that got me?” His lighter clicked to life, and Spike inhaled deeply, the smoke a comfort and the nicotine immediately smoothing out the tremble in his fingers. “She spent a century leavin’ me. First for Angelus, then for any other piece o’ shite that caught her fancy. ’S just the last leavin’ that took, you know?”

Buffy was watching him. She had finally stopped chewing on her lip. _Thank fuck for small blessings_.

“No matter what I did, I couldn’t make her stay. And I spent my entire unlife bein’ who I thought she wanted me to be. So who am I without her? Who would I be if I had stood up for myself and told her ‘no’ before I was draggin’ her away from Acathla?” Deep inhale, followed with an exhale on a dark chuckle. “I don’t have a soddin’ clue. I’d still have fought the slayers, I think; nothin’ to be ashamed about in a fight between two combatants who give it their all. Still would brawl. Still would’ve killed humans; a demon needs to eat. Still would have shoved railroad spikes in the heads of the ponces who tortured me when I was alive.” Spike winced as he heard himself make that last confession—one he hadn’t meant to make but he had as much control over his mouth as he did his heart, which meant he had none, not really—and covered it with another brief inhale. “But I burned down an orphanage once in England because Dru wanted it. Don’t think I’da done that without her; no glory or fun takin’ out a bunch o’ kids.” Spike glanced over at Buffy. She looked horrified at that last statement, but not like she was about to stake him, so that was a relief. “Other things I did for her that I wouldn’t’ve done otherwise. Don’t have a soul, Buffy, so I don’t feel guilty about them—couldn’t change them if I wanted to, so not much point in guilt anyway—but do I regret doin’ ’em? Regret doin’ things I had no interest in for a woman who didn’t love me back?” He had one final inhale on his cigarette, and Spike breathed it in slowly, letting the smoke warm him as he stared up at the stars his princess had once named. _I bet there_ is _terrible confusion in the stars. You were always good at causin’ it, princess._ “Yeah. I do.”

It was quiet between them, that restful comfort that seemed to happen more and more when they were alone together. A part of Spike warned that he should be wary; Buffy was still the Slayer for all that they were almost friends, and an orphanage burning seven decades ago would probably still be considered a stakeable offense. But most of him was as much at peace as he could possibly be, relaxing after his cigarette and knowing he couldn’t go out to a more worthy opponent.

“How do you know so much, Spike?”

“Been alive a long time, Slayer. Was chained to the Watcher’s tub and forced to listen to you all for what felt like a lot longer. You pick up a thing or two, all that livin’.”

“That bit about college kids, though. You spend a lot of time studying their relationship patterns while you were evil?”

“Oi! Still evil here, woman.” Spike sauntered over to Buffy and threw his arm over her shoulders. If she was willing to mock him, he felt reasonably assured he was safe enough to get close and start their walk again. Besides, it was as Frost said, he’d tasted enough of desire to know he’d rather end in fire. And if Buffy were to take him out, it would be with fire, not the ice of hate. That was just how the girl was built. “And no, that bit of wisdom comes from the joys of daytime telly.”

“You know, that stuff’ll rot your brain.”

He smiled down at her and tried not to melt at how Buffy smiled back. “Speakin’ from experience, are you?”

“Puh-lease, you wish you had half the brains I did. Maybe then one of your plans would actually work.”

Buffy’s eyes sparkled up at him, and Spike couldn’t help it. The girl he’d just realized he loved had gone from devastated to happy and flirty and he’d been the cause, and now she was staring at him like he was something special. Like he was someone she might possibly care about, even more than her Scoobies. Who were, admittedly, driving her right batty at the current moment and there was no saying how long this “more than her Scoobies” would last, but a bloke could dream.

His arm was still around her shoulders, and he pulled Buffy in just a little closer, leaned his head down, and gently planted a kiss on the top of her golden, gleaming, glistening hair, Frost echoing through his head once more. _“Some say the world will end in fire. . . . From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire.”_ Spike breathed in the fruity shampoo scent of her hair before pulling away before she could shove him away. _And if the world has to end, what a way to go._

* * *

**Things Spike Likes**

  1. Violence
  2. Drusilla
  3. Loud punk music _(ugh, no) (it might not be that bad? see if the record store has anything I can listen to)_
  4. Smoking _(does slayer healing prevent cancer? no matter; it’s gross and I’m not taking up_ smoking _for a guy)_
  5. Blood _(also gross, and I’m not going to be his blood pimp or whatever) (could get Weetabix or burba weed for him, or is that too obvious?) (apparently not too obvious; maybe he’s just not very perceptive? except, he totally is)_
  6. Leather? _(I can get new boots? seduce him with my feet? how do you check if a guy has a foot fetish?) (get new boots; Docs maybe? will any boot work? maybe something knee- or thigh-high?) (petition for a larger allowance or consider getting a job; boots are still really expensive and Mom is against the thigh-highs for some weird reason)_
  7. ??? Soap operas _(and other daytime TV; he’ll watch anything, and that includes MTV)_
  8. Whiskey, specifically Jack Daniels
  9. Driving _(can I find his car, figure out where it got towed to while he was in the Initiative? we can go for a drive then; driving’s romantic) (actually, it kind of is fun)_
  10. Poker
  11. Pool
  12. Those onion blossom things
  13. Poetry _(there’s that poetry class they offer in the spring semester; maybe I can take it? he could help me “study,” or, like, actually help me study)_
  14. Snuggling
  15. Talking _(but, like, seriously, the guy never shuts up, which is actually kind of nice; it isn’t lonely patrolling with him, and it’s nice knowing what’s going on with him, unlike other vampires that will not be named)_
  16. . . . me?




	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! In which plot happens and we get the final version of the list.

Giles was, rather predictably, the one who reached out to her first on Saturday around noon. Buffy had hoped it would be Willow, but . . . well . . . Giles was really more to be expected.

They sat on the front porch swing, and Buffy tried not to express her nerves out by pushing the swing beyond its limits. But Giles was staring at the wood planks beneath their feet like the held the script for what he wanted to say and it was hard to keep her feet still. Until he finally broke the tension by speaking.

“When I worked at the school, some of the teachers would talk about how strange it was when graduated students came back to visit and they could see how wise the students had grown, how adults had come out of the children who had once made spitballs in their classes. I never thought I’d see such a transformation myself because the students of Sunnydale weren’t my concern; you were. But then,” at this he looked up at her, “then you showed me how wise you were.”

Tears pricked at her eyes. “Giles?”

“I’m so sorry, my dear. You were right; I’ve been letting myself wallow, upset that my circumstances had changed, rather than determining what to do with myself given the opportunity of, frankly, an empty calendar. And that prevented me from supporting you like you need.”

Giles fell quiet again, and his eyes left her face to look out at Revello Drive. It took everything Buffy had not to fling herself at the man. He looked uncomfortable enough without any of her displays of affection that, after all these years, he still seemed to not know what to do with.

“I do not yet have a solution, but I plan to start looking for a position on Monday. You are right; I need something to do, but that something needs to allow me to stay in Sunnydale. Perhaps the museum needs someone, even just part time. Or a library. Maybe even a bookstore. I will find something, though. And Buffy?” At her nod, Giles continued. “I promise that no matter what happens, I will be continuing my tenure here. I’ll still be your Watcher and your friend.” Giles took in a deep breath, and there was a small corner of Buffy that wasn’t completely bowled over by what Giles had said that was smugly pleased she wasn’t the only one who had to take deep breaths to get their confessions out. “I won’t leave you, Buffy.”

If Buffy could have thought clearly at that moment, she would have thought something like _Screw his British sensibilities_. Even that tiny smug part of her was wiped clean with his promise. As it was, she threw herself at Giles and did her best not to squeeze him too hard in her grateful hug.

* * *

Willow was the second of her friends to seek her out. It was shortly after dinnertime that she came by, an hour or so before Buffy could escape into the rhythm of patrol and the cool of the night and the feel of Spike by her side. When she had started thinking about trying to date Spike, it hadn’t been real. She didn’t know him beyond enemy and one-time ally ( _And one-time fiancé_ , her brain traitorously whispered). But now? Now he was her friend, maybe even her best friend, and he was still the perfect height and a great kisser and super hot and sometimes when he glanced at her, sparks shot up her spine and her toes started curling, which was the most inconvenient thing when they were walking.

But she couldn’t escape yet. She was sitting on her bed with her best friend, and Buffy had no idea what was going to happen, except Willow couldn’t keep eye contact and she had used up all her emotional reserves talking to her friends the night before and listening to Spike and thinking about everything he had said and then crying a bit with Giles earlier and, hunh, apparently she couldn’t keep eye contact either.

 _God, give me an apocalypse any day of the week over this_.

When had it become so difficult to talk with her friends?

Willow was the one who broke the awkward silence. “I talked with Giles this morning. He, uh, he agreed with some of the stuff you said. About needing a teacher for the magic. He told me some stories that were like ‘woah, and I thought Eyghon was bad,’ you know?”

“That bad?”

“I’m probably scarred for life. No worries; once I process the gross bits, I’ll make sure to share. But,” the brief levity drained out of Willow’s voice, “yeah. Bad. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to hurt my friends, I don’t want to be a vengeance demon or anything else that you might have to slay—”

“Willow!” Buffy was horrified. “I could never slay you!”

Her friends’ hands stopped picking at her comforter to fly up and make calming motions. “I know! But I still don’t want to become someone like Ethan Rayne or pre-Watcher Giles. I want to be like Jenny, but without all the secret keeping that leads to badness. So maybe not like Jenny, actually. But like some of the witches Giles knows. They sound super cool and also kind of scary, but like in a girl-power, take-no-guff kind of way, not demon hoards and vengeance spells. Or like my friend Tara, the one who was with me when the Gentlemen showed up? She’s a real witch too, not like the others in that phony Wicca coven, but she’s super thoughtful and intentional with her magic. And I want that. For, like, the sake of the world and continued friendships, but also for me. Because I . . .” Willow’s voice trailed off for a moment before coming back strong. “Because I’m an awesome witch, and I deserve to have an awesome teacher.”

The stubborn, sharp nod that punctuated that statement was what got to Buffy. She flung herself at her friend and wrapped her up in a tight hug. Willow gave a little laugh-sob and then wrapped her arms around Buffy as well. “You totally deserve that, Willow. You’re _such_ an awesome witch.” After a long moment, she sat back from the hug. But instead of Buffy being on one end of the bed and Willow on the other, it was like being back in high school when they would sit cross-legged next to each other and chat about boys and school and how much of a rat Snyder was.

“How do you even find a magic teacher? I don’t think the yellow pages have those listings.”

“They’re on the Web!”

“Well, that explains why Giles never told you about them before.”

Her friend giggled, a bright, happy sound. “Apparently, there are some witches in LA that I can learn from a couple weekends a month, like an apprenticeship. Depending on how that goes, Giles says that maybe I can spend part of the summer with the coven in England he knows. Tara’s going to join me for the LA weekends and maybe England if that happens.”

“Wow, Wil! That sounds really cool!”

Willow started detailing all she hoped to learn with an enthusiasm that Buffy had thought died when Oz did the big jerkface disappearance act, and yeah, Spike was right, it wasn’t the same as high school, but maybe, Buffy hoped, it could be even better.

* * *

It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that Xander showed up. Anya had been over most of the day discussing with Buffy and her mom how Buffy might demand a salary and benefits from the Watchers’ Council. It was a tricky plan they had to make, because both the Council and Buffy knew any threats from her to not stop an apocalypse would be hollow, but perhaps she could conspicuously take vacations throughout the year somewhere not Sunnydale and see how they reacted? Maybe send them a “Hi from Rhode Island” postcard or something? Or perhaps she could write out a rough estimate of all the demons she had killed and create a charge per head, pointing out in her invoice the average Watcher head count (five slays, many weak vamps captured for training purposes, according to Giles) compared to the average Watcher salary (60,000 pounds per year for a Watcher without a Slayer plus benefits, again per Giles; 100,000 pounds for the Watcher of the Slayer, and that answered a whole bunch of questions Buffy had vaguely had about how he could stay in Sunnydale and drink all that nice scotch without any job, even considering that Sunnydale was the home of dirt cheap real estate).

That conversation had spiraled into a discussion of Anya’s favorite vengeances. Buffy felt perhaps that she should be less approving, but whenever the details got too icky, she just put Parker’s face on, say, the body of a man who had developed a permanent, untreatable fungal infection on his dick (“His wife wished that his penis would be repulsive, which really wasn’t very interesting as there are only so many ways to make a penis unattractive while leaving it attached and in working condition and I was disappointed there wouldn’t be more blood involved. But then I remembered spores.”), and then suddenly she found she was okay with the vengeances. Her mom also didn’t seem to have any problems with those stories and even offered a few vengeance suggestions of her own. Anya was very approving and suggested reaching out to D’Hoffryn on Joyce’s behalf. Her mom demurred, saying she really loved the art gallery, but the twinkle in her eye said that maybe if Anya had come by a few years earlier before the gallery was so established . . .

Buffy was very determined that the Watchers’ Council would hear none of this conversation.

When Xander arrived, Buffy left them sitting around the dining room table discussing Anya’s vengeance on a man who had gotten twenty-four women pregnant in a year to go talk to him in the living room. Unlike with Willow, there was no long wait before he started talking. She couldn’t even sit down before Xander started rambling.

“Uh, look, Buffy, I just wanted to say, well, that is . . .” It continued in that vein for a few minutes. Half of Buffy’s brain became devoted to what color she would paint her toenails next while she waited for him to get to the point. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? The Xan-Man is man enough to admit when he’s made a mistake, and I, uh, well, I shouldn’t rag on you for who you date.”

Buffy tilted her head slightly and looked carefully at her friend. He had spent the past few minutes pacing and wringing his hands, and sweat stained his armpits. He didn’t look as bad as he did when he was stricken down with syphilis and whatever else he had at Thanksgiving, but he didn’t look that much better. “Are you okay, Xan?”

“What? Why are you asking?”

“Well, because you look like death and last we talked, you seemed skeptical any ragging had happened.”

Xander dropped into the couch across from Buffy suddenly and cradled his forehead in his hands. “I know I know, I just” he spoke directly into the floor. “I realized that you were right, you know? About, well, everything. Not just the guy thing. You’re like, you’re like a superhero, right, Buffy? Like Wonder Woman or Xena or—” He turned pleading eyes onto her. “So, I guess, maybe I do hold you to a different standard, because yeah, you’re the hero. The hero doesn’t make mistakes.”

There was a very good chance Xander wouldn’t get through his apology without his face getting kicked in.

“But, well, I guess I finally realized that’s not fair to you.”

Except for the murmurs of her mom and Anya’s voices in the other room, it was quiet. “Did Anya have to yell at you to make you realize this?”

Xander looked sheepish, but at least he had lost that sickly “oh god, I’m feeling feelings or maybe it’s syphilis” look. “Yeah. She told me a few things. Well, threatened a few things. Then said how unfair it was of me to expect so much of you and so little of myself. That if it hurt me that my parents expect nothing of me, it was the opposite kind of hurt for me to expect everything of you. And then I remembered how much Willow’s parents expect of her and how much Willow can’t stand to spend time with them and realized I don’t want to be your Willow’s parents, you know?”

Part of Buffy would have liked for Xander to come to this realization based on what she had said because, damn it, she had been really eloquent for once. _Gift ponies_ , the other part of her said, _don’t look at their teeth_. “That makes sense.”

A breath heaved out of him, and his shoulders lowered from the perch they had taken up around his ears. As if that much acknowledgment was all he needed to feel less terrible about all this. Part of her wondered why she even wanted to continue being friends with this guy.

“Look, Buff, I know I haven’t necessarily been a good friend. I was a total jerk about the whole Angelus thing, and all the rocket launchers in the world doesn’t make up for me being an a-hole there. And, well, I didn’t do great in history, but I know enough of my own that I’ll probably be a jerk about something again, and I’ll need you to yell at me and maybe Anya and Willow to also get on my case before all of this really sets in. I had to do summer school more than once for a reason, not just for an excuse to not be at home. But you’re one of my best friends, Buff. And if to keep being your friend I have to realize that I’ve been a jerk and do better, then it’s worth it.”

_That’s right. I want to be his friend because when he’s not being a jerk he’s actually pretty great._

“So you’ll stay out of my love life? And knock it off with the ‘I told you so’s and guilt trips when I mess up?”

“I’ll do my best. And when I screw up, I’ll let you use me for target practice.” Xander looked nervous in the same way that chemistry tests used to make him look when he stood up and opened his arms. It was better than syphilis-queasy though, and Buffy moved into his hug willingly.

 _Also, he gives really good hugs_.

“Good.”

* * *

What Spike had said that night haunted Buffy. Had she twisted herself to meet her friends’ needs? Would she like who she saw if they weren’t around to cast shadows on her that made the twists seem natural and right? If Giles betrayed her again or disappeared on her, would Buffy recognize herself?

Some of this, she was sure, were the normal questions college kids asked of themselves. She saw it in her peers who weren’t drowning themselves in their coursework or booze. So, mostly in the philosophy majors. But still. It was nice to be normal in this. Even if she didn’t have answers to any of her questions.

* * *

They were supposed to be having another Scooby meeting trying to figure out what to do about the commandos. They were still out there, still sticking their noses and tasers into her town, still trying to kidnap her and her . . . Spike. Her friend Spike. Her patrol buddy Spike. Her friend that she was really crushing on and not just deciding to crush on, not anymore, but couldn’t admit it because her friends couldn’t handle it . . .

 _Wait_. _Isn’t this what Spike was talking about? Not letting their thoughts or my thoughts about their thoughts twist me up so much I don’t do what I actually want and instead do only what I think they want or what they’ve said they want but it’s not what I want?_

What would be the problem of her dating Spike? Yeah, he had tried to kill her multiple times, but he wasn’t interested in doing that anymore, she was trying to kill him back then too, and he hadn’t succeeded anyway. He had kidnapped her friends, but frankly, most of the trauma of that night was their own fault; Spike was a surprisingly innocent bystander to all the fallout, other than him taking them to a fire-damaged factory with unstable stairs that nearly killed Cordelia. But Cordelia had gotten down the steps just fine; if Willow and Xander hadn’t been making with the smoochies, would she have walked more carefully up those stairs, or at least not stomped away in fury and hurt, and been unscathed? Either way, not Spike’s fault.

The real question was whether Spike would go back to trying to kill her if the chip burnt out or, more likely, she decided to act upon her growing recognition that it was wrong to leave him with this obvious, painful handicap that could result in his dusting if a soldier found him or he pissed off the wrong human and got into a fight he couldn’t get out of. Which, knowing him, was very likely. But even that wasn’t the real question, because Buffy already knew the answer: if he still wanted her dead, he wouldn’t patrol with her. Or he would have left her to be picked up by the commandos that time they ran into them. Or he would have poisoned her or left her as chow that time a lucky throw by a vamp had caused her to lose in a head-butt contest with a gravestone or he wouldn’t have assisted with the Gentlemen or a thousand other things. If Spike wanted her dead, a chip wouldn’t stop him, not for long.

The real question was whether she would ever be brave enough to admit to Spike that she wanted to date him rather than just continue to save up to buy new boots and make sure they had hot sauce at the house for when he stopped by.

A black leather whirlwind flung itself into Giles’s apartment, disrupting Buffy’s train of thought.

“Good lord! What is that terrible smell?”

The black leather was covered in some kind of sticky, violet substance. While the Scoobies gagged and pinched their noses, Buffy wrinkled her nose and eyed it critically with the experience that came from laundry battles with hundreds of demon substances. The substance wasn’t moving but still had the shine of fresh goo. Maybe it would harden and clean off easily, but it was more likely that a razor would be needed to gently scrap off the substance. The goo didn’t look like it would dissolve easily in water, so she’d need to get out her collection of solvents to clean the razor as they went along, and the leather would have to be treated at least once after they were done for both the smell and to prevent the goo from damaging the leather.

Buffy sniffed and amended the number of treatments to at least twice, but most likely three times.

It was going to be a miserable experience cleaning that up. Too bad she had already admitted to herself that she liked Spike, otherwise she could pretend to be overwhelmed by the stench and leave him to clean it up by himself.

“Ran into a Kurlang demon on my way over.” Spike announced from the front door.

Anya waved her hand in front of her nose. “I hope you’re wrong. That smell is worse than Xander’s basement. If a clan tries to move in, Sunnydale will be even more unlivable than normal. It would drive anyone away.”

Buffy’s eyes met Spike’s. “Anyone?”

“Of course. That’s how Kurlangs take over areas. They have no fighting skills to speak of, but when you produce that potent of a reek and can release it at will, kind of like those skunks you humans complain about but I’ve never seen the problem with. They’re so helpful. Just curse a man to be followed by them for the rest of his life and—”

“Anya?” Buffy interrupted. “What were you saying about Kurlangs?”

“Oh. Right. Just that they don’t need to fight because they have glands that release the slime Spike’s covered in. If a few of them move into an area and leave their scent everywhere, anything that might pose a threat to them moves out pretty quickly. Either they’re starting to move in and you’ll have to kill a bunch more in the next few weeks—good luck with that and maybe get some protective gear— r this one was just the scout and when it doesn’t come back, the rest of the herd will move on.”

“Unh hunh.” _Where would I even buy protective gear for this? A bait and tackle shop? A doomsday prepper’s bunker?_ “And do you, by any chance, happen to know where these glands are on them?”

Anya drew herself up. “Of course I do. They have them in their hands and tails, obviously, but also on their necks to protect their reproductive organs. There’s about five hundred in an adult Kurlang.”

“And the one that got you, it’s dead now, Spike?”

“’Course it is, Slayer.”

“Buffy,” Giles groused, “I really don’t see what the point of this all is when Spike is making my home smell like an inebriated dock worker urinated on himself before getting lost in a landfill.”

“Slayer’s thinking that maybe we can use this stench to our advantage.”

“I am sure that’s not what Buffy—”

“No, Giles, he’s right. The problem is that we don’t know how to shut the Initiative down, right? We can bomb their base, but we don’t want human casualties, even if they would be evil human casualties. So what if we got rid of the humans using this—” Buffy waved her hand in Spike’s direction “—reek?”

“You wanna throw Bleach Boy at ’em? Why didn’t you say so earlier, Buff? That sounds like a great plan.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “No, I mean we’ll grab those glands, leave them in the Initiative base, leave some TNT throughout, wait for all the soldiers and scientists and whoever else to evacuate, then Spike and I can release any harmless demons, escape, and then boom! No more Initiative. When they come back, they’ll have no more base, no captives, and no files. And no evil mayor to sneakily approve their building site.”

Willow looked thoughtful. “I bet they’ll have a really hard time getting the Army to support them if they try to open again when their first base was destroyed due to unexplainable circumstances.”

Buffy beamed at her friend. “Exactly!”

Voices started up at that debating hows and whys and wherefores, until Spike’s cut through all of that. “Need to get a move on if you want to get to slicin’ and dicin’ before some demon that won’t look down it’s nose to eatin’ a corpse finds our Kurlang. Don’t feel much like findin’ another one to spew all over me.”

“Right.” Buffy stood. “I’ll go with Spike, see what we can get. Willow, we know Riley is one of the commandos and that they’re probably located near Lowell House. Could you find some kind of tracer spell that will let us track where he goes, see if there’s some kind of entrance that they’re using? Anya, can you tell Giles everything you know about, umm, curious slime?”

“Kurlang, pet.”

“Yeah, that. Will this stuff go bad on us? Do we need to use it within two days? Then, can you, Xander, and Giles either do more research on these slime guys or help Willow?” Buffy walked to the kitchen and grabbed some Tupperware before going to the closet where Giles kept his weapons, where she dug around until she found a couple sharp knives and a hatchet. “We’ll be back!”

Spike grinned at her. “Don’t wait up for us, kiddies.”

* * *

His life had taken him to a lot of weird places, but cutting up a demon with the woman he loved while she alternated between worrying that by doing this she was getting too close to the what the commandos did and explaining how they would get his duster cleaned was a first. Spike didn’t think too often about the differences between this woman and the last woman he had loved—the differences were practically a song he knew by heart—but they were especially clear now. Dru had loved her blood and mayhem, but if something unpleasant had to be done, she would have refused and left Spike to do the work, not grouse and gripe but get to it alongside him. And if something of his had been destroyed, Dru would have left it to him to fix or forget about rather than inform him how she would be fixing the problem so long as he was okay with it because she knows how much he loves that duster.

As he calmed her fears by pointing out she wasn’t slicing up a demon corpse for fun or whatever daft reasons the soldiers told themselves but to protect others the way people used to use the bones from animals they had killed for tools and was quietly warmed by her ten-step plan for cleaning his coat, Spike knew there was no place he would rather be than helping Buffy save the world.

Now he just had to figure out a way to let her know and hope that this confession of his feelings wouldn’t result in being laughed at the way every other confession of his invariably had.

* * *

The mission went well, despite Xander’s vocal, oft-repeated doubts. Willow had been able to find a spell that would mark Riley’s location across a map of Sunnydale, and they spent a few days tracking Riley while the glands Buffy and Spike had harvested chilled out in a cooler because Giles refused to let them stay in his fridge. (Part of Buffy agreed with his caution. The other part of her thought that the man had once willingly called a demon to be possessed by it; he shouldn’t have so many holdups considering the glands didn’t even smell so long as the goo stayed inside them. Not like he had had to chop a demon up and learn the hard way what the glands looked like by accidentally cutting through one.) Riley spent a lot of time around campus as he went to classes and on his little patrols with his army friends and a lot of time in Professor Walsh’s office (like, too much time for a TA checking in with his boss and normally Buffy would be all ew over the implications that it was a professor–student romance—especially considering he once wanted to date her—but knowing that Riley was a commando and remembering how furtively he’d whispered to Walsh after the thing with the Gentlemen and also the fact that he reported to some “professor” who wanted Buffy hauled in? All signs seemed to prove once and for all that her prof was evil in addition to being a complete bitch). He also spent an absurd amount of time in Lowell House and going into the woods and ending up, somehow, in or under Lowell House.

The same spell placed on Professor Walsh and on some of Riley’s frat friends (each person needed a separate map and they were really creating a false sense of the demand for maps of Sunnydale with all this tracking) showed the same things—a lot of time spent in Lowell House and a place in the woods that led directly to the house. One night on patrol, Buffy and Spike went and found the entrance by waiting in the right area until the soldiers came through with an unconscious vampire draped between them. Willow managed to find the blueprints for the lab (“The mayor might have been evil, but civic law still requires that blueprints for every structure be kept by the city. And, well, it’s easy enough to hack into their system. I’ve done it before.”), and finally, they had a plan.

Frat parties were held, without fail, every other Friday night at Lowell house. It seemed safe to assume that all the commandos also doubled as frat bros, so while the party was raging, Buffy and Spike would break into the base and head for the air vents, where they would smear the Korlung goo to make it even harder to clean up and to keep themselves from being spotted by any roving commando or scientist. Assuming Walsh wasn’t in her office, Willow and Giles would break in and make sure no Initiative information was being stored there. If she was in her office, they would wait until the base presumably called her about the terrible stench, and then they would break in. A half hour after Buffy and Spike left, Xander and Anya would go to the party with a couple of the glands and do the same gooifying to the frat house. Based upon how potent the stench was, the frat house would clear out pretty quickly. They figured most of the soldiers would immediately go to the base, but with the stench there as well, soldiers and scientists would probably clear out pretty quickly.

That was where things got tricky. Should Buffy and Spike wait outside until all the commandos had left to go back in with their dynamite and risk being locked out? Did they stay in the vents while all the chaos was unwinding and risk being caught there or locked in? Ultimately, Buffy decided she would rather stay in rather than risk trying to sneak in twice, and Spike was more than willing to follow her lead. They would need a keycard, which Buffy could get by knocking out a scientist if one went off by himself while they were laying down the goo or by slipping into the hustle and bustle of people leaving and stealing one, and so Spike spent the time leading up to the frat party teaching Buffy how to pick a pocket. She wasn’t the best, but he finally declared that she’d do. Between Xander’s military memories, Giles’s misspent youth and surprisingly versatile library, and Willow’s actual knowledge of chemistry, they were able to build enough remotely detonated explosives to take down the lab and anything left in there.

Xander bemoaned that the plan would never work, what with the Scoobies spread out and Spike involved.

He was wrong.

It wasn’t neat; it wasn’t clean. Xander and Anya got in and out unscathed with only some awkward conversation about why they hadn’t been seen around campus before, but Willow and Giles were almost discovered by a janitor. Buffy and Spike dusted the vents they crawled through with their stomachs and did what they could to keep the Kurlang stench off themselves and each other while also trying to not bump into each other. It was hot and sticky in the vents, and it quickly became smelly, and it took Buffy five false starts to make enough noise to lure a scientist away from the others where she could casually knock him out and move him someplace he wouldn’t be found. And then the evacuation took forever as the commandos first insisted on scanning every inch of the base for the smell, lasting far longer than they had expected before the stench forced them out. Buffy ended up pressed with her nose against Spike’s neck, breathing in the scent of leather, smoke, whisky, and masculine yumminess as much as possible before the noxious fumes in an enclosed space made her pass out. It was hours later before they were able to free the peaceful demons and leave a few more explosives throughout the base. They keycard unlocked a door marked “314” that revealed a horrible creature put together with demon parts, and Buffy left one bomb right on top of the creature and another on the desk with two computers and a mess of files in that room. The scientist Buffy had taken out woke up during this, and they lost a half hour in part due to him. But finally, shortly before dawn, they were able to detonate the explosives (Spike got the honor of pressing the button; the balance of “went on one date with a commando who later tried to arrest her” versus “got cut open and chipped by power-hungry scientists” definitely fell to his favor in regards to revenge-getting) and call it a night.

* * *

“We didn’t find any files in your professor’s office that pertained to the work she was doing for the soldiers, so it seems safe to presume that any research they had would have gone down with the rest of their base. You did blow it all up, correct?”

Buffy stifled a yawn and nodded. This was the fourth time she had had to answer this question, and she still hadn’t had a chance to shower. “Yup. We were super careful to make sure there was a bomb near any computers or filing cabinets. We also put a couple in their armory, so any explosives they had also helped take down their base.”

Giles blinked owlishly at that. “That’s very good thinking.”

“It was Spike’s idea. He knows mayhem.”

“Where is the Bleached Wonder?”

Xander’s tone was less cranky than it usually was when he referenced Spike. Buffy couldn’t tell whether it’s because he was too exhausted to be petulant or because he was begrudgingly willing to acknowledge that Spike had been helpful and made sure Buffy got out of the base in one piece. Either way, she was too grateful for the slight softening in his attitude and too tired herself to snap that she’d already explained why he wasn’t there, so she settled for simply repeating her explanation: “It was close to dawn, so I sent him home. I figured he and Giles would both appreciate it if he weren’t stuck here all day.”

Because she hadn’t given him the Gem of Amara, even though she’d thought of it. She’d twisted herself into knots over it, weighing out what Spike could do with it in their battle versus what he could do with it when the battle was over. Because for all that she was pretty sure they were friends, for all that she really, really liked him, Buffy didn’t know what he was thinking. He had never actually said, “Slayer, ’m glad I never killed you. Wouldn’t kill you now if I could.” Or anything like that. And if he could kill her and decided he wanted to, she kind of wanted to be able to fight back against him and stake him as necessary. Even if it would break her heart.

A fervent “Good thinking” from Giles indicated that she had been right. At least on the fact that Giles didn’t want to play host to the undead. On everything else, who even knew?

The post-baddy recap petered off after that. There were only so many ways to say “everything blew up” and “we couldn’t find anything outside of the lab.” Giles was really interested in the demon hybrid Buffy had stumbled across, but without Spike around to explain some of the different demon pieces involved in the monster that conversation also died quickly. And they were all too tired to figure out how to monitor the commandos and make sure they didn’t come back or how to veryify that none of their research had escaped their now-destroyed lab. Anya had fallen asleep leaning against Xander at least thirty minutes ago, and Willow looked like she might take Xander’s other shoulder at any minute despite how tense Anya could get around the two of them being close.

(During one of their “let’s figure out how to get Buffy a salary and benefits” conversations, Anya had turned, very serious, to Buffy: “Buffy, you wouldn’t lie just to be polite. Do you think I need to worry about Xander and Willow?”

“Umm, what?”

“Xander and Willow. I remember why I came to Sunnydale in the first place, and they’re still so close. Xander says it’s fine, but obviously I have doubts about how trustworthy he is in this situation. What do you think?”

Buffy hadn’t been prepared for the conversation, even though, honestly, she shouldn’t have been surprised Anya had asked. “I don’t think you have to worry, no,” was Buffy’s response as she slowly thought out loud. “I don’t know what Xander was thinking, but for Wills, I’m pretty sure it was just the rush of the guy she had liked for years finally liking her back, you know? They were both pretty devastated by how they hurt Oz and Cordy; there’s no way they’d go down that route again.”

“Xander was probably doing that stupid guy thing of thinking with his penis.”

“Probably.” Buffy couldn’t suppress a grin even though Xander’s penis was the last thing she ever wanted to contemplate let alone discuss. “Guys seem to do that a lot.”

“So long as his penis only thinks about me from now on, we’ll be fine.”)

Giles adjusted his glasses on his nose. “As we seem to be getting nowhere further on this now, I propose that we call it a night. Or, er, day, as it were.”

Xander raised a fist half-heartedly in a salute: “Hear, hear, G-man.”

“Must I remind you not to call me that?”

Buffy stood, slowly, and shook out her limbs. A shower and change of clothes was definitely in order, but she still had an errand to run before she could pass out and sleep for a week. _Phooey_.

* * *

Spike still wasn’t entirely sure how he had gotten to his crypt. He knew, objectively, what had happened, could recall the events one by one. But he still wasn’t entirely sure how anything had happened, as his mind was stuck on one moment in the base that haunted the nightmares he refused to admit to.

She had looked so perky as she kneeled before the scientist who was watching them with wide-eyed fear, and Spike had had no idea what was going on. They were done; they could get out of this funhouse, and instead of grabbing the scientist and moving her cute behind, Buffy wanted to chat?

“Are you one of the guys who put behavioral modification chips into demons?”

“Wh-what d-do you w-want?”

“A yes or no answer. And I’d hurry if I were you; we’re on a time table and I’m willing to break bones to get the answers I want.”

Spike knew Buffy was lying at that one, but their new scientist pal obviously didn’t. The man had become a ghastly shade—the lights in the place really did nothing for anyone—and responded with a yes. Spike was all prepared to leave him behind for that, when—

“How long does it take you to put a chip in?”

“About f-forty-five m-m-minutes.”

“And it would probably take less for you to take one out, right?”

The man stared at Buffy, which made complete sense as Spike was also staring at her. She ignored him and instead continued to beam her California smile with a hint of Slayer steel at the man in front of her.

“Probably. Yes.”

“Good. Then as quick and carefully as you can, you’re going to take that chip out of my friend’s head. I’ll make sure he won’t hurt you when you’re done, but if you don’t do the job right, he’ll be the least of your fears.”  
“Pet, are you sure?”

She turned to him, and her eyes softened to something he couldn’t name as her smile became genuine. “Of course I am, you big dope. Why else do you think I opted to knock him out after all those excellent pick-pocketing lessons you gave me?”

“Assumed it was just because you still weren’t very good at it, pet. I remember you tryin’ to sneak some nail polish into my pocket.”

He probably deserved the punch in the arm he had gotten in response.

The first time Spike had had brain surgery, he had been completely unconscious. This time, he could hear the power saw cutting open his skull, could feel the man moving above him and the twinges of pain the local anesthetic couldn’t combat, and could smell both the fear pooling off the man and his own blood as it hit the air. But most importantly, he could see Buffy’s eyes as they flickered between watching him and supervising their doc. Nothing else really mattered.

After the berk was done working on his noggin, they’d been off. Buffy had allowed him the honor of blowing the hellhole up, then once she had made sure he could walk on his own, she had pushed him in the direction of his crypt, telling him to go home and rest while she took care of their friend and reported back to the gang. He’d stumbled back to the crypt in a daze before sitting down in his chair. He hadn’t moved since then beyond to feel for the surgical site on his head to confirm that the entire evening hadn’t been one of his weirder, bender-induced dreams, too trapped in the memory of her eyes as she told him they were getting the chip out and the feel of her hand in his while the surgery was actually happening to do much else.

Then, a shaft of sunshine wandered into his crypt, and he had to move.

“Spike! What are you still doing up? You should be resting!”

Ah, the strident, chiding tones of the woman he loved.

“What’re you doin’ here, luv? Wouldn’ta thought I’d see you till tonight.”

Immediately, her glorious righteousness faded into something softer and a bit bashful as she ducked her head and turned to close his crypt door. Spike had known for a while now that he would fight for Buffy; it was an interesting moment to realize he’d dust for if needed.

“I wanted to check on you, make sure you’re okay. And I stopped to get you some more blood; thought you might need it.”

It said a lot about how focused he was on every expression that flickered across her face that he hadn’t even noticed the sack Buffy was holding.

“If you’re hungry now, I can heat some up while you clean off.” Buffy wrinkled her nose. “No offense, but you smell really bad.”

“I’ve a shower downstairs. Bring it down when you’re done?” Normally he’d have ended that with a leer, not a question, but his head was starting to hurt and he was tired and half-convinced none of this was real, he’d wake up and be in those labs, not here with Buffy having somehow become her friend.

“Yeah, okay.”

A long, drawn-out dream the result of being tortured and starved was the only explanation for how willingly Buffy had agreed to heat him up some blood and bring it down to where his bed was. Only explanation.

* * *

When he got out of his shower, towel slung low across his hips, Buffy was asleep on his bed, the “Kiss the Librarian” mug he had nicked from the Watcher’s full of blood and on the table next to his bed. None of this did anything to convince Spike he wasn’t in the middle of a dream, especially since the scent of the blood was human, not pig, so Buffy must have gone to Willie’s to get it, but just in case it was real, he pulled on the sweat pants he had procured after Buffy’s last nocturnal stay before guzzling down the blood, tucking Buffy under the covers, and slipping into bed next to her.

* * *

Spike woke to Buffy wrapped around him, sound asleep. His head had a constant ache and his stomach a slight gnawing that reminded him that, if he hadn’t had a complete mental break in the last twenty-four hours, he had recently had brain surgery, again, and could use some blood to help heal. But that would require moving, and he was currently being used as a pillow by a mercurial goddess. His head and stomach would have to wait.

He’d probably been lying there awake and gently stroking her hair for twenty minutes before she started to move. She froze for a moment, and then turned up to look at him, a blush his sensitive eyes could barely pick up staining her face.

“Mornin’.”

“Good morning.”

“Sit up, luv. I’m gonna light a candle.”

Buffy moved off him, and Spike busied himself with lighting a few candles that were within arm’s reach. While his back was still to her, he asked the question that had been running around his head: “Why’d you have him do it, pet?”

Luckily, she seemed to know exactly what he was asking, as Spike didn’t think he had it in him to explain more than that. “You’re my friend, Spike, and I don’t like it when my friends aren’t able to defend themselves. And, well, I know what it’s like to lose all your power; it’s not fun.”

“Yeah?” Spike leaned his pillow against the headboard and laid back against it, his mind flicking through all he knows of Slayers, how she could possibly have . . . “Wait, how old are you Buffy?”

“Eighteen. My birthday’s in three days.”

A corner of his brain saved room to panic over what to get her for her big day. The rest of it was overcome by— _“Rupert did that to you?”_

Buffy had been looking at him from the pillow she had moved to when his chest had been briefly unavailable, but at that, she glanced away and gave a small nod. It was enough for Spike’s brain to start whirling out in a thousand different directions even as he cataloged every inch of her he could see to verify she was okay. _She trusts him, and he did that to her?!? Takin’ out a Slayer in battle is one thing, but to sneak behind her? I could kill him for doing that to her. I_ could _kill him. Would killin’ get the point across, or would a few lessons that Angelus passed along work better? Wanker’s been tortured before, but Angelus and I have very different methods—_

“It was pretty awful.” Buffy seemed to almost curl up into herself at that. _That won’t do_. Spike reached out to pull her into his arms before he could think. It was a better way of verifying that she was in one piece after her Cruciamentum than just looking her over, anyway, Buffy soft and warm in his arms, her head resting once again on his chest as his hands gently traced down her back. _Yeah, ’ve still got it bad for the girl._ “But, you know, I survived. Still here. All with the powerful Chosen Oneness. And I know it’s been better for you since you learned you could hit demons, but still, I didn’t like how you wouldn’t have been able to fight back when we ran into those commandos.”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll start killin’ again?” Spike asked with half-hearted interest, far more concerned with the way her hair rippled under his fingers and categorizing all the things that indicated she was still alive, still here.

“We’re friends, right, Spike?”

The question came a little out of the blue, but who was he to question the way any woman’s mind worked? “I like to think so, Buffy.”

She nodded firmly against his chest, and Spike had to restrain himself from purring at how delightful even such an innocent move felt. “Me too. So yeah, I’m worried, but only a little. Because you’re my friend, and you know I’d have to stake you if you killed again and it would hurt me if I had to stake you so you, as a good friend, wouldn’t do something to make me have to dust you.”

“Can’t say I can argue with that, pet. ’Course, I’m glad to just be able to follow it.”

Buffy swatted his arm lightly in response, and it was such a casually affectionate gesture, one you might give an old lover who had done something that was bad and that needed a punishment but that you weren’t really upset by and maybe were even a bit amused, and in the flickering half-light he felt safe, and truths spilled out of him without his conscious acknowledgment: “I’d never hurt you, Buffy. Even with the chip gone. Never do anything to hurt you or make you stake me or make you regret gettin’ it out. Don’t ever want to hurt you, love.”

She seemed to melt into him a bit more at that, and perhaps Spike should have left the gentle quiet to wrap itself around them, but he had one more question, he just had to know: “Buffy, why’d you give me a chance?”

“Hmmm?”

“You never had to ask me to join you for patrol. Wasn’t your problem I was goin’ stir-crazy at Rupert’s place. Even if you didn’ want to stake me and put me outta your misery, you didn’ have to let me join you.”

Her heartbeat sped up as he talked, and he could sense all the blood rushing to her face. Normally, Spike’d be all for anything that could make the Slayer blush, but since he didn’t know what had caused it, her embarrassment was lacking the usual rush of enjoyment it gave him.

“Iwastryingtoseduceyou.”

 _Wait, what?_ Spike gaped at the woman trying to crush her face into his pectoral muscles. _There’s no way she said . . ._ “Sorry, missed that, luv.”

“I said,” Buffy sat up quickly, fists at her hips in a battle stance, eyes glaring firmly into his almost daring him to laugh. “I was trying to seduce you, okay?”

 _Right, well, that is right barmy._ “Why?”

“There were reasons, okay?” Buffy huffed a breath, blowing the hair that had been in front of her face away and doing delightful things to her chest and— _No, I will not be distracted by her tits._ “I was talking with Willow and realized that every guy I’ve been with has been super tall. Like, ‘how’s the weather up there?’ tall. Which was dumb, because tall guys are not inherently better and honestly, back pains. The Slayer healing can only do so much. And god, do none of these people know how to bend? Is it just that when you reach a certain height you decide you own the world? Since me and all these, these _monoliths_ never worked out, I decided I should try to date someone shorter. And I actually don’t know that many guys and frat parties are actually super lame and I kept having to duck out of them anyway—why is it duck out? Do ducks just leave parties early all the time? Anyway, but I did know someone who wasn’t twenty billion stupid feet tall and was around and actually apparently a really good kisser—thank you for that bit of knowledge, Willow—and I thought, why not try, you know? What’s the worst that could happen? He could be evil and I have to kill him, send him to hell, and save the world? Wait, I already did that, so it’s fine.”

Her arms had gotten quite . . . enthusiastic during that little speech, and their flailing had done nothing for Spike’s resolve to focus on her words and not on her tits as the flailing had done great things for them too, emphasized by the fact that Buffy had apparently not bothered to put a bra on when she changed last night. _Focus, Spike_.

The words moved slowly out of his mouth. “You were tryin’ to seduce me?”

“I thought . . . well, we weren’t friends then. It made sense.”

He thought back to the red and black outfits, the extra leather, his dreams of Buffy and a belly-button ring.

“And now?”

A quick swipe of a pink tongue across her lower lip, and Spike was a minute away from doing something he’d probably regret, something that would lose him the best friend he’d ever had because there was no way she—“And now you’re my friend, Spike. I can’t lose you.”

Her voice had trailed off to a whisper as she confessed his same fear, but her heart rate was still elevated with hinted at passion and her eyes were big pools of fear warring with desire, and Spike had never once done the safe the thing.

“Y’know, Slayer, you really didn’t need to try so hard. Seein’ as how we’ve been engaged for almost two months now by my count.” He slowly moved his hand up to her face and reveled in the softness of her check as he stroked it with his thumb.

“So you’re saying I should stop saving up for thigh-high boots?”

Buffy’s voice was a teasing whisper undercut with nerves, and Spike groaned at the mental image those words provided even as he slipped his hand behind her neck and pulled them closer together. A hairsbreadth away from her lips, he paused. “Buffy, love, do you want this?”

Her eyes were still large with fear as they flickered between his eyes and his lips, but the nod she gave was strong, Slayer through and through. “Yes.”

They hadn’t kissed since Buffy had found his car and he’d been so delighted by her he couldn’t help himself from pulling her to him. However, that hadn’t been a real kiss, just a quick, crushing thing, and the last time they had really kissed had been months prior. But Spike’s lips met Buffy’s like he was coming back to a half-remembered home—gentle, soft kisses at first that explored the territory before desire made those kisses deeper and more confident. Her small hands gripped his hair as she moved forward to sit on his lap, wrapping her legs around his torso while his hands moved from her neck to her back to her waist to her hair to her waist, mapping every inch of her with a desperation he had never felt before, not even when Drusilla remade him. Buffy was light, and she was heat, and Spike needed her, needed to feel her softness and be awed by her strength, needed to smell her scent and be maddened by every jaunty flip of her hair and roll of her eyes. The way Buffy was holding him close with her thighs—and god, but the thought of their strength was enough to make him want to write sonnets again or maybe try his hand at dirty limericks—and moving her hands to map his shoulders and back made him think that maybe, just maybe, she was feeling the same passion he was. That maybe, for once, the girl was as invested in him as he was in her.

Eventually, Buffy pulled away, gasping for breath as he worked his way down her throat. “I had an entire list.”

A sucking kiss where her shoulder met her throat derailed, and Spike had to prompt her to begin again: “An entire list?”

“Mmmm, a list of the things you liked. Thought if I could do enough of those things, maybe you’d like me too.”

“You know, I’m gonna have to see that list sometime.”

Buffy’s head rolled back in invitation for him to work his way over to the other side of her neck, an invitation Spike eagerly accepted. “Can’t. Too embarrassing.”

“But if you don’t show me the list, I won’t be able to put you at the top of it.”

Buffy let out a breathy sigh at that. It was unclear whether it was due to the thought of her being at the top of his list or due to what he was doing to her earlobe, but with the way she was moving against him, Spike thought he might have a chance to test out both possibilities quite thoroughly.

* * *

**Things Spike Likes**

  1. Buffy
  2. Buffy in short skirts
  3. Buffy in boots
  4. Watching Buffy fight
  5. Fighting next to Buffy
  6. Fighting with Buffy when she gets all righteous
  7. Buffy’s hair
  8. Buffy in Spike’s bed
  9. Being in Buffy’s bed
  10. Dancing with Buffy
  11. Drinking with Buffy
  12. Drinking whisky off Buffy
  13. Watching _Passions_ with Joyce
  14. Those onion blossom things
  15. Reading poetry to Buffy
  16. Kissing Buffy
  17. Shagging Buffy
  18. Giving Buffy a massage



. . .

* * *

Not that Buffy thought she could actually tell Willow this, or at least, not until the shock of her announcement that she and Spike were dating had worn off, but Willow had been 100 percent right: dating a compact guy really was the best. All the bits really were nice and accessible. And, well, depending on how things went, she had two rings tucked away inside Mr. Gordo, waiting to be worn again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, dear hearts, if you're feeling like it's a lot of work to keep yourself alive right now--fed, watered, slept, showered, let alone taking care of necessary commitments--please know that you're not alone. And also know that I am very proud of you and, more pertinent to your interests, Spike, who spent most of his existence caring for people who struggled to take care of themselves, would also be very proud of you. You're doing great.


End file.
